ONE PER CENT. 



79 



great house to be brought to suspension, which, 

 with real but for the moment unrealizable assets, 

 fails to receive the accommodation it always 

 reckoned ou ? Or is the mighty bank, with its 

 hosts of depositors, to break, because they are 

 rushing in mad fright to claim the return of their 

 balances in gold, or because it has unwarily 

 trusted speculative companies, which cannot re- 

 pay the advances they received ? No one knows 

 how far he is safe, how far the foundation on 

 which his business has all along proceeded may 

 not now be giving way. But there are two most 

 essential points to grasp in the understanding 

 of .these sufferings. These events are effects of 

 causes which have preceded them, and in those 

 causes, and not in those effects, lies their signifi- 

 cance for the national wealth ; and, secondly, 

 they are occurrences in the region of ownership 

 and financial machinery, and not in the region of 

 the wealth itself. They are settlements of losses, 

 determinations of future commercial positions, 

 discoveries of what firms are to disappear, and 

 what other mercantile houses are to succeed them 

 in the future. But the real question for the 

 country is, What has happened, or is happening, 

 to its wealth, its industry, its power of producing? 

 It is easy to conceive in imagination commotions 

 as agitating as those of a Black Friday, and yet 

 which would have little effect on the prosperity 

 of the country. A multitude of land-owners might 

 gamble with their estates as stakes with a ma- 

 chinery which would not disclose their position 

 till a deferred period. On the day of settlement 

 the agony might be intense, the terror of many 

 great, boundless ruin overwhelming others, and 

 winners established in colossal fortunes ; yet the 

 national wealth would be undisturbed ; owners 

 of property would be changed, and that would 

 be all. Quite other would be the result if the 

 gambling had led to selling the seed-corn abroad, 

 to buying costly wines, or to the exporting of the 

 cart-horses for luxuries, or to the neglect to re- 

 pair tools necessary for winning the next harvest, 

 or to other similar acts. In such cases the wealth 

 of the country, and the well-being of its inhabi- 

 tants, would be attacked at the core ; the public 

 loss would be most real, and its reparation long 

 deferred. 



Of the latter character is the commercial de- 

 pression of which we write. A so-called mone- 

 tary crisis, of itself alone, tells us nothing as to 

 the range of its disorders, and their action on 

 the national prosperity. If they are the conse- 

 quences of pure gambling, what one man or firm 

 loses another wins. In other respects there is 



no change. But it is true that these crises do 

 presuppose some destruction of wealth : and so 

 far they are of national importance : but it is this 

 destruction, and not the city disturbances, which 

 is the power at work. And here it is that the 

 present depression indicates an amount of dis- 

 aster, paralysis, and injury to the public wealth, 

 with which no city convulsion can compare. If 

 three banks out of four in the city, or as many 

 mercantile houses, were to fail, the injury would 

 be slight by the side of the effects of these years 

 of suffering, so far as these failures were not the 

 direct consequences of wealth distinctly destroyed 

 and unreproduced. The urgent, need, the extreme 

 importance, of investigating to the bottom the 

 character and causes of the disorder from which 

 so many nations have been now suffering for so 

 long a period, becomes abundantly clear. 



We are thus brought to the root of the ques- 

 tion. What, then, is that cause ? Why is it 

 that, for some three years or more, so many coun- 

 tries are suffering under stagnation of trade, are 

 complaining of reduction in business, are buying 

 less and selling less, have only diminished profits 

 to reckon up, are abounding with laborers out 

 of employment, have steadily distributed ever 

 scantier wages .to their people, are reducing their 

 comforts and enjoyments, are sending back emi- 

 grant laborers to their old homes from lack of 

 employment, even amid new lands and fertile, 

 uncultivated fields? The explanation will cer- 

 tainly not be found in gold or in its movements 

 from one vault to another, nor in pieces of paper, 

 by whatever name they may be called, nor in any 

 form of currency whatever. One per cent, has 

 nothing to do with gold, nor has any one said 

 anything so ridiculous. Nations are not made 

 poor, nor their business stagnant, nor their mines 

 and their factories shut up, nor their people 

 thrown out of employment, because the tools of 

 buying and selling are in one place rather than in 

 another. Such bright ideas may crowd in upon 

 the minds of a frightened city when seven per 

 cent, threatens to become ten ; but all talk about 

 the reserve, and the circulation, and bank-notes, 

 has sunk under one. Such a rate throws them 

 at once upon the realities of commercial life, 

 upon the state of industry, upon the substances 

 to be bought and sold, not upon the machinery 

 of exchanging. The cause lies elsewhere, it is 

 not to be found in exceptional circumstances of 

 an uncommon kind. No series of bad harvests 

 has destroyed the population. No innovations 

 in legislation, no change in our laws or in tariffs, 

 had disturbed the habits and the confidence of 



