that have brought dowu the price are real and uncontrollable. The evil lies not in 

 tlie banks, nor the curren<;y, nor the speculators. There is no remedy but a check 

 on production." The editor of De Bow's Review said: ''To our great disparage- 

 ment, the facts show that we have been guilty of the folly of overstocking the mar- 

 kets of the world." 



Hunt's Magazine, in a review of the condition of business at this period (1843), 

 said: "One of the most singular features of this state of things is that this abun- 

 dance of money has continued for many months without producing a rise of prices 

 or stimulating trade, a result which it has never before failed to bring about. On 

 the contrary, the leading articles are constantly falling; cotton is lower than has 

 ever been known before, arising from superabundance of production." 



Again in his commercial review in the month of October, 1844, Hunt says: "Food 

 in England was cheap, favoring a home trade — the China market took off unusual 

 quantities of goods — Europe increased her consumption (cotton), as did our own 

 manufacturers; and money, both here and in England, was, throughout the year, 

 unusually abundant; yet a crop of cotton 370,000 bales less than the previous year 

 failed, under this favorable combination of circumstances, to impart success to the 

 movements of operations. The result developed the truth that the production of 

 cotton is so rapid and large that a continuance of the most favorable circumstances 

 is necessary to absorb the annually increasing quantities and sustain a fair price." 



The same authority in 1845 said: "The supply of cotton in the United States, 

 including Texas, is far beyond the wants of Europe." 



In a review of the cotton trade for the season 1847-48, the New Orleans Price 

 Current says : 



" Seldom if ever within the period of its history as the leading commercial interest 

 of our country has the cotton trade been subjected to so trying an ordeal as that 

 through which it has just passed. The food crops of Europe— the failure of which 

 the previous year had been productive of such widespread distress among the ])opu- 

 lation of the Old World, which, by the great enhancement in the cost of sustenance, 

 had exercised a depressing influence upon the cotton trade — gave promise of a fair 

 average yield, thus removing the most formidable obstacle to the more extended 

 consumption of our great staple. 



"The early prices obtained were satisfactory, until October, when the commercial 

 revolution which prostrated credit in Great Britain, and which spread to the Conti- 

 nent and to the Indies, put a sudden check to our prosperous course and produced a 

 more rapid depreciation of prices than we remember ever to have witnessed. After 

 recovering materially from the shock produced by this state of atYairs, a still more 

 severe bloAv was given by the startling intelligence of a revolution in France, and 

 the overthrow of the monarchy. This movement of the people in favor of popular 

 rights rapidly spread to other countries in Europe, and in the tumultuous state of 

 political affairs commercial credit was completely overthrown, and trade in a meas- 

 ure annihilated. In this general prostration of credit and commerce probably no 

 interest connecting our own country with Europe was more severely affected than 

 the cotton trade, and prices here were at times depressed to within a fraction of the 

 lowest prices of 1843." ' 



In 1848 De Bow's Review said: "So great was the diflSculty in realizing money, 

 even on cotton, with so heavy a stock pressing on the market without a corresponding 

 demand abroad, that extensive shipments were made on very limited advancements, 

 and in turn the Liverpool market has undergone a similar pressure from the anxiety 

 of holders to realize their advance on the shipments made at New Orleans." 



