THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 183 



CHAPTER X. 



THE GREAT RAILROAD PANIC. 



A Railroad Gamblers' Plot The New York Gold Clique make War on the 

 Farmers The attempt to lock up Money Trouble in the New York Stock 

 Market A Eailroad the first to succumb The Money Market on the 17th 

 of September Scene in the Stock Exchange The Panic begins Failure 

 of Jay Cooke & Co. Effect of the Failure The Stock Market demoralized 

 Run on the Union Trust Company More Suspensions Worthless Rail- 

 road Bonds the Cause of the Trouble Spread of the Panic throughout the 

 Country The United States Government offers Aid Suspension of the 

 Union Trust Company A Railroad the Cause of the Trouble The Stock 

 Exchange closed An Anxious Sunday The Railroad Gamblers demand 

 that the United States Treasury be opened to them Firmness of the Gov- 

 ernment The Panic subsides ;Its Lessons A Warning to the Country. 



TOWARDS the last of August, or early in September, 

 1873, a combination of speculators in railroad stocks 

 led, as is popularly believed, by the shrewd and un- 

 scrupulous capitalists who had so often and successfully 

 manipulated the stock of the Erie road, undertook to 

 inaugurate a series of movements in the stock market 

 of New York, for the purpose of depressing certain 

 stocks in which they proposed to operate, and of enabling 

 them to extort from less successful operators a heavy 

 interest for the use of money by creating an artificial 

 stringency in the money market. Their time was, from 

 their point of view, well chosen. In the months of 

 September and October there is always a real scarcity 

 of money in New York, owing to the demands of the 

 country banks for funds to bring the year's harvest to 

 market. By taking advantage of this season of real 



