a panic is a state of mind. it cannot be regulated by statute law nor preached down by press or pulpit. at such times, suspicion, apprehension, and alarm take possession; reflection and sobriety are crowded out; men do and say irrational and unreasoning things; incidents trifling in themselves are exaggerated into undue proportions; all kinds of difficulties are conjured into the imagination. the best that can be said of such a phenomenon is that it is of brief duration.59
in wall street, where men are accustomed to looking forward at all times, the question is ever in mind as to the next panic. the last one left its sting; we are interested now in knowing about184 the future. have we learned how to avoid these difficulties? may we hope to diminish their force and mitigate their terrors? may we rely upon the superior organization of business and the greater quantity and quality of capital to soften the effect of the next shock? i think not. we may lull ourselves into a coma of fancied security as we reflect upon experience and its expensive lessons, but we deceive ourselves if we think that we shall finally arrive at a point where these convulsions shall cease.
nothing of that sort can come about among people strong with health and vigor, confident and full of energy, and impatient for action. with such a people life is incessantly mobile; a constantly increasing volume of creative activity impels them onward. panics are unknown in dead countries and in countries that have not yet heard the call of progress; in all other countries the violence of these shocks is directly proportionate to the enterprise of the people. the more civilization there is, the greater the creation of wealth; the more wealth there is, the greater the volume of speculation that creates wealth. in such circumstances it is idle to talk of a time when panics shall cease, because confidence and enterprise must ever push onward, speculation in material things must accompany them, supply185 must overtake demand, and human nature with its moods and caprices must finally pay toll.
vast industrial, commercial, and credit expansions lie somewhere ahead, and somewhere ahead excesses and indiscretions the world over must play their part and exact their penalties. we should cease to be surprised at these vicissitudes, for, “paradoxical as it may seem, the riches of nations can be measured by the violence of the crises which they experience.”60 moreover, panics are rarely such unmitigated calamities as they are pictured by those who experience them. at least they serve to place automatic checks upon extravagance and inflation, restoring prices to proper levels and chastening the spirit of over-optimism. in a world of swift changes they are soon forgotten.
we may seem to be prepared for these periodic set-backs, and there may be men amongst us of sober reflection who are really wise enough to foresee the top to a normal movement, yet the accidents that have happened will happen again,—bad harvests, war, sudden failures, earthquakes,—these are not easily discerned in advance. sanguine and ardent merchants will make the same old mistakes; good times will engender the same old hallucinations; people who see, or think186 they see, wealth being created all around them, will always rush in and buy at the top; there will be too much work for the dollar to do—and after that the deluge. finally, in order that we may not become pessimists, let us remember the words of the greatest of american philosophers: “the changes that break up at short intervals the prosperity of man are but advertisements of a nature whose law is growth.”
another phenomenon quite as curious as that of panics, and one that is similarly psychological, is the unhesitating, slam-bang zeal with which we place the responsibility for these misfortunes on the shoulders of others. we, as a people, have brought the disaster upon ourselves by reason of our indiscretions. we have lost our heads and entangled ourselves in a mesh of follies. but we do not admit such reproaches, even in our communings with self. not at all. the fault lies elsewhere, and it is balm to our bruises to place it elsewhere with indignant energy. it will not do to preach at such times about currency systems, laws of supply and demand and kindred generalities, for these are abstract and vague to a mind inflamed by losses. what such a man wants is a head to hit; something concrete, a target for his exploding wrath. and he never hesitates. he says wall street did it. his187 fathers said the same thing, and his children will follow suit.
now here is a strange thing. after a man has said, “wall street did it” over and over again, he believes it, just as he believes or takes for granted a similar tedious reiteration by the humble katydid. to such a man, the thing he wants to believe, when stated over and over again, comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind as a demonstrated truth, notwithstanding an utter absence of proof or of reasoning. he says “wall street,” or “the stock exchange,” until he can think of nothing else. it is a catch-phrase, short and sweet, which he hammers home to his own ineffable satisfaction, and he thinks it and broods over it to his heart’s content. the politician then comes along with his cures for all the ills of society, and, finding wall street a convenient means of perpetuating his accidental notoriety, his voice joins the harmony. the indictment is then complete.
take the panic of 1907 as the last and most conspicuous example. the financial losses involved, and the extent of the disturbance of the machinery of credit, made it the worst panic of this generation. as it burst upon the country at a period when to the outward eye prosperity reigned throughout the land, men were at a loss to explain it. they could not understand how188 such appalling conditions could occur in such apparently cheerful surroundings. as everybody was affected by it in greater or less degree the whole country was full of people with a grievance. they were themselves directly to blame for it, but they looked elsewhere for the responsibility for their folly.
that sinister influences were at work was, in the popular mind, undeniable; and by that same token we are pretty close to “wall street” when we talk of things sinister. at about that time a member of congress made a speech in which he asserted, with all the art of katydid repetition so dear to the heart of the true believer, that the stock exchange was the cause of the panic. rich men broke the market and “held the bag,” he said, while panic-stricken owners of property poured the invested savings of a lifetime into that capacious receptacle. nothing could be simpler. newspapers must print such things, and the public found what it wanted on the first page. even to-day, five years after the fact, this delightful explanation of the 1907 panic blossoms like the rose as a political campaign progresses. the voice of the hustings “knows its business.”
mr. john burroughs warns us that it is one thing to treat your facts with imagination, but quite189 another thing to imagine your facts. sufficient time has elapsed since 1907 to soften, somewhat, the bias and prejudice created by the events of that year, and perhaps there may be among us minds open to reason. the new york stock exchange feels, honestly, that a great injustice was done it by the criticism and abuse so generously poured out in the first shock of that event. far from causing the crisis, its members assert that the institution fulfilled one of its most useful functions in giving ample warning of its approach, and that, when those warnings were disregarded, it concentrated all its machinery on the task of restoring order from chaos. they speak feelingly when they say that never in its history has the stock exchange been called upon to deal with so great an emergency, and never has it demonstrated so admirably its fundamental purposes. when they make these statements they offer to prove them. let us examine the proofs.
the panic of 1907 was not unlike many preceding financial disturbances. the opening months of the year had witnessed a general liquidation on the stock exchange, brought about naturally, and in simple, automatic compliance with economic laws and precedents. there had been over-expansion in all lines of business; careful students saw the portent; able men of power and influence190 heeded its warning and set corrective forces in motion months before the shock came. total transactions in shares sold on the stock exchange had risen from 187 millions in 1904 to 284 millions in 1906, while the value of the securities thus sold increased from 12,061 to 23,393 millions of dollars respectively. this was too rapid growth, and the general liquidation that had been under way for months effectually corrected it, since new york city bank loans secured by stock exchange collateral declined, as shown by the comptroller’s report, from $385,652,014 in august, 1905, to $251,867,158 in august, 1907—a corrective force represented by $133,784,856.
the stock exchange has been defined as “a barometer of future business conditions,” and never did a barometer give clearer warning. it said in effect to all the banks of the country and to business men generally: “there has been a widespread over-expansion of credit; it must stop; we are doing our share here in new york to correct it; you must do likewise.” and, in order that there might be no failure to understand what was meant, new york city bank loans were reduced with drastic emphasis, months before the panic came, by nearly 35 per cent. “without an exception,” writes prof. s. s. huebner, “every business depression in this country has been191 discounted in our security markets from six months to two years before the depression became a reality.”61 senator burton, another authority, emphasizes the point further: “in addition to other influences which promote an earlier rise and fall, there must be mentioned the more careful study and attention to the financial situation which is given by dealers in the stock markets and in great financial centres. they often forecast the grounds for a rise or fall in prices before the general public is awake to the situation.”62 this, then, was the situation in the summer of 1907. the stock exchange had “cleaned house,” and had liquidated thoroughly, warning the country to go slow.
why was not this warning heeded? i recall vividly the daily expression of surprise, on the floor of the exchange, and throughout the financial district, in the months that elapsed between our march liquidation and the outbreak of the october panic, that the country should pay so little attention to “wall street’s” admonition; that it should continue its unprecedented boom despite the plain intimation that the funds to support it were exhausted, and despite the general192 knowledge of every tyro in business that future conditions are discounted in wall street as freely as promissory notes.
had the business interests of the country so much as inquired into that warning they would have found by turning to the comptroller’s reports of the loans of national banks for the entire country that such loans had expanded from $3,726 millions in 1904 to $4,679 millions in 1907. they would have seen that whereas the new york city banks contracted their loans by nearly $134,000,000 from august, 1905, to august, 1907, loans and discounts by the banks of the whole country in that period actually expanded $700,000,000. surely it will not be urged that wall street or the stock exchange had anything to do with bringing about this expansion. on the contrary, it shows that speculation in commercial lines, in new enterprises, in lands and in all the various forms that “out-of-town” banks are expected to finance, went on and on in vastly increasing volume long after the danger signal had been hoisted on the stock exchange, and in utter disregard of the warnings those signals conveyed.63
193 as the summer of 1907 advanced, speculation throughout the country continued in rapidly increasing volume, while on the stock exchange there was an almost complete cessation of activity. business men of the west and south seemed to feel that as there had been no serious failures, and as the decline in the stock market had restored values to an attractively low basis, there would be a normal recovery similar to that which followed the panic of 1893. they felt that the trouble, whatever it was, had now been corrected, and in this fancied security they went about with further expansion of their business enterprises, confident that no serious difficulties were in store. the stock exchange was often cynically referred to in that period as “the only blue spot on the map.” its members were cheerfully invited by a western newspaper to “shake off their torpor and join the sunshine movement.”
it is only fair to say that there was some force in the buoyant if superficial viewpoint of the country at large, for in the autumn of 1907 we were blessed with all the kindly fruits of the earth in abundance. the average crop of our agricultural products gathered that year was enormous, and behind it lay large reserves of wealth that had accumulated from a series of good194 crops in the years just preceding. there was, moreover, a partial failure of foreign crops that brought about heavy foreign requirements, thus assuring rich returns to american producers. our railroads, which in the previous panic of 1893 were so affected by declining traffic and by the unproductiveness of new territory into which they had ventured that bankruptcies became general, were early in 1907 in better physical condition than ever before. their gross earnings were at a maximum; their surpluses fat with the profits of recent years; their credit high. a long accumulation of foreign-trade balances had made the inherent strength of the nation greater than ever before. finally there was the great essential difference between 1907 and former years in that we were now, by statute law as well as in fact, on a gold-standard basis.
and yet, without one unsound basic factor visible to superficial observers, we were suddenly plunged into a grave disaster—a panic which in actual money losses surpassed any of its predecessors. it came, this cataclysm (as the stock exchange had vainly predicted six months earlier), at the worst time it could possibly come, just when the banks were called upon to furnish $200,000,000 to transport and market the crops. small wonder that in the face of such an optimistic195 outlook men stood aghast at the violence of the panic. as they had not understood the warning, so they could not understand its swift fulfilment. in all the long processions of panic-stricken people who stood in line at the banks in those trying days, not one in a hundred could understand how an institution could be solvent and yet be forced to suspend. later on, smarting from losses, this bewilderment gave way to distrust and suspicion, as is often the case, humanly speaking, when men look elsewhere than to their own folly for the sources of their misfortunes. they were in a receptive mood when the charge was made that “wall street and the stock exchange” had brought about all this misery; they believed it to be true, and many still believe it.
the charge was so widely circulated and was fraught with such possibilities of mischief that there was danger of ill-considered legislation directed against the stock exchange and supported by ill-advised public opinion. thus it happened that governor hughes of new york, doubtless moved to forestall hasty law-making, appointed a committee to investigate the stock exchange. in another chapter we have reviewed the work of this commission; meantime, the words of its chairman are quoted, in passing, as a sort of ex post facto reply to the outcry that “wall street did it.”
196 “the immediate cause of the panic,” he says, “was a simultaneous rush to sell securities, by holders who perceived that there was trouble in the money market, and who wanted cash to meet maturing obligations. these holders were not wall street men merely, but people in all parts of the country who had invested some of their savings in stocks and bonds. the very raison d’être of the stock exchange is to supply a market where invested capital can be quickly turned into cash, and vice versa. the remoter cause of the panic was a long course of speculation in all kinds of property, real and personal, that had pervaded all parts of the country, and many parts of the old world, and had now reached its climax.” mr. white here adds in a footnote that it has been “shown conclusively that speculation on the stock exchange was not the chief contributor to the collapse of 1907, but that speculation on a much wider scale, through the length and breadth of the land, was the exciting cause.”64
i have said it was not surprising that the public failed to observe signs of disturbance in the happy conditions that seemed to prevail before the panic.197 the blindness of the mass of the people to these impending catastrophes is, indeed, a marked characteristic of all similar epochs. let us digress for a moment and consider the history of other great disturbances. in 1825 the king’s speech as read by the lord chancellor dwells on “that general and increasing prosperity ... which, by the blessing of providence, continues to pervade every part of the kingdom.” this was in july; in december of that year the whole country was torn by a devastating financial crisis. the london economist, in 1873, dwelt at length on the “astounding” progress of the austrian states, and said, “all over the rich countries of the danube, capital and labor are vigorously at work in the discovering and turning to profit the amazing resources which have been lying unheeded for centuries.” this was written in march; the bourse at vienna closed its doors may 9th, and a panic of exceptional severity was followed by long and continued depression. on december 31, 1892, r. g. dun & company’s weekly review of trade said: “the most prosperous year ever known in business closes to-day with strongly favorable indications for the future,” and yet four months later the storm burst.65
these instances go to show how the elect may198 err in estimating conditions, despite the fact that in two of these three memorable crises ample warnings of an impending catastrophe were proclaimed in the stock market long before these prophecies of continued expansion were printed. in each instance the portent was ignored; in each the ultimate penalty was paid. so it was in our own great crisis of 1907, and so it will always be.
there was a panic throughout the united kingdom in april and october of 1847, yet the early response to changing conditions took place two years before, when stocks began to fail in july and august, 1845. in the year 1857 commerce and industry expanded throughout america in increasing volume up to the very eve of the august crisis, yet the stock market in the summer of the preceding year gave clear warning of what was to occur. one year before the panic of 1873 a similar “slump” foretold what was coming, and the same was true of the year preceding the panic of ’93.66 previous to the last-mentioned crisis stocks began to fall, with unmistakable emphasis, early in 1892. of seventeen of the most active, five reached their maximum price in january, 1892, three in february, four in march, two—lake shore and michigan central—in april. and as we have seen, identical preliminary warnings developed199 on the stock exchange from one year to six months before the last great panic of 1907.67
the panic that hit the paris bourse in october, 1912, causing a disturbance not equaled in violence since 1870, was brought about by sowing the wind through an immense public speculation based on two fine harvests in russia and a feverish revival of commercial and industrial activity all over europe. up to this point all the indicia of the movement—such as bank loans, building operations, public and private extravagance, and200 a blind infatuation for speculation by a normally prudent nation that had not speculated on a large scale since the panama débacle of 1894—corresponds exactly with conditions in america just preceding the 1907 crisis. the similarity between the two incidents goes even farther, for early in september of 1912 the french bankers and agents de change, recognizing the strained condition of credit, had deliberately put in motion corrective agencies designed to stop the rise with the least possible derangement of confidence.
they would have succeeded, no doubt, and the situation would have exactly paralleled our own discounting processes of march, 1907, but for the unforeseen balkan difficulty which, coming out of a clear sky, upset the plans of the conservative financial forces and precipitated a panic. it came, as a french banker explained, a week too soon—by which he meant that, given a little more time, the worst phases of the disturbance would have been avoided through gradual and orderly liquidation. as it stands, the panic will no doubt go down into french financial history as “the balkan panic,” just as our disturbance of 1907 is ascribed, faute de mieux, to wall street wickedness; but in reality both the french and american crises had their origin in precisely similar causes. the balkan news in201 paris only precipitated what the french bourse had planned to accomplish in an orderly manner, just as wall street and the stock exchange had done five years earlier in a similar emergency. the essential lesson of both instances is that the same causes which generate prosperity will, if pushed far, generate an equivalent adversity.
the details of the panic of 1907 are still fresh in mind, and need be but briefly referred to. banks and trust companies closed their doors and suspended payments to depositors. cash and credit became almost unobtainable; we were face to face with demoralization. clearing-house certificates were resorted to at practically all banking centres throughout the country; there was a general requirement of time notices for withdrawal of savings bank deposits; all normal credit instruments were impaired. the secretary of the treasury was forced to exercise heroic discretion in the matter of security for government deposits and for the very necessary increase of a note circulation that was then suffering from a spasm of contraction. there was an immense hoarding of funds and a consequent drying up of fluid capital, while from one end of the country to the other, there was liquidation, business contraction, retrenchment, panic, and ruin. “wall street” and the stock exchange had foreseen202 that the chain was only as strong as its weakest link, and had done what it could to prepare the public for the break. to assert at this late day that it did aught but its full duty is humbug in excelsis.
i have already cited one instance, the country’s expanding bank loans as contrasted with “wall street’s” contraction, to show how plainly the warning was conveyed. as another instance, take the immobilization of capital tied up in the enormous real-estate speculation then prevalent. in new york city alone the increase in mortgages recorded jumped from 455 millions in 1904 to 755 millions in 1905, an increase over the previous years of 32.7 per cent, and 66 per cent, respectively.68 the figures showing the increase in building permits are similarly significant, revealing the fact that in 1905, 1906, and the early months of 1907, money was pouring into new construction at a rate without precedent. in greater new york alone, not including queens county, building permits granted in 1904 amounted to $153,300,000, and in 1905 to $229,500,000, and in the face of disaster this rate of increase continued up to the very eve of the panic.69
203 outside of new york the expansion in building operations was equally rapid and equally ominous, showing an increase in twenty-five cities alone from $201,300,000 in 1903 to $234,200,000 in 1904, to $280,400,000 in 1905 and to $307,800,000 in 1906—all this but a small part of the actual funds thus locked up throughout the whole country.70 we thus find that one of the most important and inevitable causes of the panic was the absorption of exceptionally large amounts of capital in enterprises that required a considerable time for completion, or which, when completed, were not immediately profitable; and to them may be added factories and extensive public and private works of every kind. this form of expansion, as senator burton points out, when carried to extremes almost invariably brings about a disturbance.
now let us consider. does all this expansion of bank loans outside of new york and all this tremendous increase of building operations show that the samsons of “wall street” were pulling down the temple on their own heads in order to slaughter the philistines, as alleged, or does it show an indifference and lack of readjustment to the growing stringency of money, as revealed by204 the stock exchange in its liquidation of march and april? “as a rule,” said john mill, “panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.”71 there would have been no such “betrayal” had judicious reflection and a measurement of facts followed wall street’s warnings.
a shrewd man, one of the old school of new york city wholesale merchants, who has nothing whatever to do with wall street or the stock exchange, yet whose trade arteries extend to many parts of the country, has long governed his business by the published reports of stock exchange transactions. if he sees there revealed a wholesome, normal, and conservative expansion in all lines of business and a money market that betrays no uneasiness as to the future, he presses on into new lines of endeavor, confident that the immediate future is serene. if he finds an urgent liquidation on ’change, with the coincident phenomena of impaired credit instruments, he draws in his lines and waits. it makes no difference to him who is rocking the boat, nor why; experience has taught him that if it rocks, the time has arrived to go ashore. and this steady205 old merchant, i have no doubt, is but one of a numerous type.
those who ignore the economic tides that ebb and flow through the medium of the stock exchange as they did in 1907, do so because they do not understand that these great market movements are really but expressions of natural laws. if there is a rising tide—a boom—it is attributed by thoughtless people to speculation and gambling. if there is a bad break, it is caused by panic-stricken repentant sinners, or by the activities of the bears. the essential point that is missed here lies in the fact that, while bulls and bears alike may have their brief hour, sooner or later, regardless of them, the market responds to actual conditions and discounts the future of those conditions.
booms are not made on the stock exchange; they are made in the country’s fields and forests and workshops. panics are not created there; they have their origin in mistakes and excesses throughout the world, and in psychologic conditions which stock markets cannot hope to control. the pendulum may swing far, but it comes back. sooner or later the movement of prices tells the exact story of future business, and of credit, and of all the economic agencies that enter into them. this was not well understood206 in 1907, and, as i said at the beginning, i doubt if it will ever be understood in the sense that it will avoid a recurrence of panics. all that we may hope for is that periods of depression, which are inevitable, may not be attended in future by such a loss of the reasoning faculties as that which brought about the affair of 1907.
now let us consider another cause of the panic—the currency system, always bearing in mind the fact that the first and greatest cause of the panic was the over-expansion outside of new york that has just been described. the causes which we are now to consider were of minor importance when measured by this overshadowing matter; nevertheless they played their part and must be considered accordingly.
not all panics, to be sure, can be prevented by a perfect currency system, yet this one could have been measurably prevented, and “wall street” and the stock exchange had labored for years so to prevent it. at the gatherings of the chamber of commerce, at the bank meetings, at all the meetings of merchants and manufacturers for years preceding 1907, the mischievous effects of our currency system were proclaimed and the ultimate outcome predicted. congress was petitioned again and again to remedy those intolerable conditions, and to permit national banks to207 expand their circulation under proper safeguards, but without avail.
when the storm burst, a most impressive object lesson in practical finance resulted. what was at worst but a normal stringency of the circulating medium developed, when added to abnormal demands from the country at large, into conditions that created great alarm. there was no way by which the banks of the country could use the resources which they actually possessed to meet the urgent requirements of the hour. a great nation of enterprising people found itself—and still finds itself—compelled to do a banking business differing in degree, but not in kind, from the old-woman-and-her-stocking system of finance. the way our bankers got down on their knees to london and paris in that emergency, frankly admitting their inability, under our old flint-lock laws, to handle a situation which foreign bankers meet without difficulty, is a subject at once painful and humiliating. literally our bankers begged for help and got it. some day we shall have to beg again.
had the national banks of new york city enjoyed the right to expand their circulation in the manner provided by the plan of the american bankers’ association, at least a part of the débacle would have been avoided. “the banks208 and trust companies of this city have in their vaults the largest store of good credit that can be found in any city in the world,” said one of america’s foremost economists as the panic raged, “but much of it is utterly unavailable because of our currency system. one of the trust companies that closed its doors has in its possession live assets amounting to over $50,000,000. all this credit is dead. it cannot do the work of a single dollar in the paying-teller’s cage. what is wanted in a time like this is freedom to convert the credit of banks into a medium of payment that will satisfy the people.”72
true enough, and just what the whole financial community, including the stock exchange, had been repeating for years. currency issues which do not provide for all situations, including not only ordinary demands, but also such exceptional cases of shrinkage as this one was, can never be called perfect, nor even safe. there is no health in them.73 the most effective and the most rapid means of regulating and protecting the general credit situation is by increasing or diminishing the volume of outstanding bank-note currency not209 covered by a reserve of gold or other lawful money. this method is employed successfully both in france and in germany. the bank of france and the imperial bank of germany to some extent regulate credit conditions by acting as central banks of discount; but their most effective action is by increasing or diminishing the uncovered amount of their outstanding notes. when additional currency is needed as a circulating medium they supply this currency by issuing notes. when contraction of currency, or a check upon the further expansion of bank credits is desirable, they accomplish the result by diminishing the volume of their outstanding notes and by raising the discount rate. this system is as nearly perfect as any yet devised.74
whether we shall ever succeed in adopting it, or something like it, in america, is the burning question in our banking offices to-day. until something is done, the layman who distrusts the plan of a central bank and looks upon wall street with abhorrence, may find satisfaction in knowing that the average new york banker is the most worried and harassed man in american business life. with millions of other people’s money in his possession subject to withdrawal210 by check at sight, and with millions of the best security in the world in his vaults lying absolutely idle and worthless so far as raising currency is concerned, he stands between the devil and the deep-blue sea. anything that frightens his depositors, or even remotely suggests panic, gives him a cold chill. people who talk of manipulation by new york bankers as a cause of the panic of 1907 or any other panic are blind to the fact that any disturbance of normal conditions is the one thing that bankers would avoid as they would avoid the plague.
there was a third cause of the panic in the course pursued by the president. in some quarters it is still termed “the roosevelt panic,” and there exists a belief that the president by his actions and speeches played a large part in bringing about the crisis. personally, i feel that this has been exaggerated. there had been, unquestionably, wrongdoing by certain corporation managers. the president, with a characteristic vigor not unknown to politicians, seized upon it as a theme for his speeches, and the “evils,” the “malefactors,” the “corruption” and “dishonesty” with which he bruised the air, raised a suspicion in many quarters as to the status and security of the whole financial situation and undoubtedly contributed to the frightened liquidation of the211 day. the impression these utterances produced abroad, where american securities were popular, was painful, and led one returning tourist to remark that europe was acquiring the idea that we were “a nation of swindlers.”
all panics are largely psychological, and this was no exception. the president’s public speeches came at a time when emotion, apprehension, and alarm filled men’s minds; and at a time when those irrational moods were most likely to exaggerate the difficulties that existed, and to conjure up difficulties that did not exist. panics seem to come from lack of money, the real difficulty is lack of confidence, and it was to this that the president’s course directly contributed.
i am of the opinion that, judged by his public utterances, especially his october speech at nashville, tenn., the president had not the remotest idea that such an awful shock as the panic of 1907 was imminent. he was not a student of economic conditions; he had no familiarity with crisis-producing phenomena; he had never seen a panic at close quarters. his speeches did not cause the panic, for that disturbance was foreordained; they served, however, to hasten it, to intensify it, and to keep it alive. perhaps i may add that the sparks beaten by him from the anvil of political expediency at that unfortunate212 moment threw more light upon the president himself than upon the evils he condemned. perhaps, too, that was what the president most desired. in any case, the fact remains that just as there is too much confidence in times of excessive expansion, so there is too little in times of unreasoning depression; and that the president’s attitude aggravated the latter situations is undeniable.
but by what stretch of the imagination can the stock exchange be credited with playing any part in this third cause of the panic? if temporary depression results from exposure of wrongdoing among railroad, industrial, or financial institutions, nowhere in the land is execration poured forth upon the evil-doers more vigorously than within its four walls. far from complaining, the stock exchange and the whole investment community welcome such exposures, despite their effect on the market, for the precise reason that their own protection and benefit, if nothing else, is promoted by it.
there was yet another reason for the panic, closely related to the attitude of the president. i refer to the predicament of the railways of the country as 1906 passed into 1907. staggering under a load of traffic which sorely taxed their equipment, the managers of these properties213 cried aloud to the investing public for funds. but capital was not to be had. tied up in real-estate speculation and in quarters whence it could not be easily recovered, the normal supply of capital was immobile and inert. what was worse, encouraged by the attitude of the president, an epidemic of radical anti-railroad legislation became manifest in the several states, new and onerous burdens of taxation were imposed, and a wave of distrust and suspicion regarding railway investments was created. simultaneously the cost of wages and materials advanced—both characteristic phenomena indicating trouble—and, as a consequence of all this blockade, the ratio of net to gross in the matter of increased earnings fell from the normal proportion of about 40 per cent. in the first nine months of 1906, to less than 10 per cent. in the same months of 1907.
railroads are public utilities that must continue to handle business offered them no matter what happens, and so, to meet all these abnormal demands, but one course was left open to them, and that was to raise funds by issues of new stock. this, of course, amounted practically to an assessment of stockholders; as an expedient it failed because “wall street” had already recognized the symptoms of disease. it was too late. money and credit attract money and credit, and214 confidence attracts both. there was a shocking absence of confidence in the emergency of 1907, and the railroads suffered enormously by it.
with this matter certainly wall street had nothing to do; it could not in fact do more than it had just done in pointing out to the country at large, through a drastic process of liquidation, the obvious withdrawal of far-sighted investors from a situation that had become tense. nor can the railroads be censured, because the great volume of business that confronted them was not created by them, and yet had to be transported by them. the fault lay, of course, in the wholesale and reckless expansion of all lines of industry, and in the immensely increased extravagance of public and private life.
i venture the prediction that when these conditions again prevail, as they must in a great and vigorous country like ours, the stock exchange will still be found sounding its warnings, but it will not do to hope that those who learned the bitter lesson of 1907 will profit by that experience, because the condition of mental disturbance which is a part of every panic cannot be regulated by the will, nor kept within bounds by the statute law. the one lesson we have learned from the predicament of the railroads in 1907 is that there is a tendency toward disturbance in large accessions215 either of business or of capital. “at intervals,” says walter bagehot, “the blind capital of a country is particularly large and craving; it seeks for some one to devour it, and there is ‘plethora’; it finds some one, and there is ‘speculation’; it is devoured, and there is ‘panic.’”75
summarized briefly, i have attempted to show in the foregoing pages that the stock exchange for many months prior to the panic had been steadily liquidating and contracting, and had served notice on the country at large that the time had come to put a stop to the prevalent over-expansion. it has been demonstrated that instead of heeding these warnings the general business of the country, as evidenced by the increases in loans and commercial discounts and by an over-speculation in real estate and in public and private extravagances, continued to expand up to the very eve of the panic, and was stopped then and there only by sheer lack of capital. nothing can be of greater importance in any consideration of the 1907 crisis than that its overshadowing cause was the attempt to do too much business on too little capital, and compared with this all other aspects of that situation are of minor importance.
i have shown that an antiquated currency216 system played a conspicuous part in the crisis, through contributory negligence on the part of our law-makers. the part played by the president has been cited as a third, though somewhat negligible, factor in sowing the seed of distrust, and also the trying position in which the great common carriers of the country found themselves after the seeds of distrust had been sown. these were the four causes of the panic of 1907.76
how well the stock exchange did its work in that great emergency is a matter of record. it did not close its doors; there were no failures; no relaxation of the protection afforded the public; no departure from the high standard of morality which is ever its goal. in one week, ending october 25th, 5,166,560 shares passed through its217 hands, representing, with the transactions in bonds, a par valuation exceeding $483,000,000.
now, in the very nature of things, a financial panic is the inability of many debtors to meet their obligations, plus the fear that many others may be in the same plight. at such a time men hasten to sell for cash that for which there is the readiest market. thus they sell securities because securities are immediately convertible; thus they turn to the stock exchange, because that is what stock exchanges are for. hence it follows that in a crisis such as that of 1907 the ruinous decline manifests itself more sharply, and is felt more keenly, on the stock exchange than on the cotton exchange or the produce exchange. men turn to it for first aid to the injured, and the greater the casualty list, the more marked is the disturbance of values. that this is not well understood by the public often unfortunately leads to suggestions of improper methods where none exist.
finally, where do we stand? orthodox economists like wells talk of over-production as a cause of panics; currency experts bewail a lack of circulating media; theorists of the school of jevons are driven to seek in sun-spots the potent force of all our harvests; levi and mill dwell upon the periodicity of panics and would fix their appearance by schedules of time; politicians and218 thinkers-in-embryo point the finger at wall street, and yet, with all that has been written, thirteen great crises at home and abroad within the last century show that we have not begun to get at these disturbances. drought has been a cause of mischief, yet we have learned to irrigate and to conserve; epidemics have smitten us, yet we have mastered sanitation; floods have ruined whole territories, yet we have built dikes and levees. but every now and then, when business seems to be at its best, when merchants are dividing large profits, and when labor is best rewarded, a panic occurs and the whole structure collapses.
to say that wall street or lombard street or any group of men anywhere can bring such conditions to pass is to deny all the facts of experience. depressions may come from any of a hundred causes, but panics originate in the mind; they are manias. walter bagehot gave up trying to prescribe for them because he realized that sudden frenzy is not an ailment to be foreseen and prevented. “but one thing is certain,” he said, “that at particular times a great many stupid people have a great deal of stupid money;” to which he adds, “our scheme is not to allow any man to have a hundred pounds who cannot prove to the lord chancellor that he knows what to do with a hundred pounds.” when thousands219 of people ignore all the warnings of experience, as they always will do; when with a blind misdirection of energy they sink borrowed capital in quagmires at fancy prices, as they always have done; and when, shorn of their all, they are simultaneously seized with a mania to denounce others for the consequences of their own folly, as they always must do, one cannot avoid the thought that perhaps bagehot’s humorous solution is the best that has been devised.
