THE CALL OF THE LAND 



depreciation of an overwhelming majority 

 of the securities listed. Business in the 

 Exchange completely stopped. Chaos 

 reigned. Despair took possession of the 

 speculators. On the day of the great crash 

 many of the curbstone brokers seized the 

 highly respectable 'closet' bankers by the 

 throat and shrieked with dying despair for 

 the return of their all, whereof the promo- 

 ters had robbed them. Others the sense of 

 their horrible ruin bereft of reason and they 

 sought in suicide an end of their misery."* 

 The years following the crisis of 1873 saw 

 a perfect avalanche of suicides. t 



In a third class of cases promoters have 

 made careful provision for the survival of 

 the enterprise and for returns upon its pre- 

 ferred stock, but have been guilty of crim- 

 inal, or at least highly reprehensible 

 negligence touching the fate of the com- 

 mon stock, subscriptions for which were 

 nevertheless zealously solicited, in fact had 



* Wirth : " Handelskrisen," 520. 



t Taylor, in the article named above, 395. He refers for 

 the statement to Neumann-Spallart : "Uebersichten der Welt- 

 wirthschaft," vol. iii, 56. 



266 



