THE FIRST CORNER IN CURRENCY 127 



of the journals of the city. The Times pro- 

 claimed that a clique in Wall Street had the com- 

 merce of the country by the throat and compared 

 its control to that of Bismarck over the lesser 

 German states, while the Herald made wild 

 guesses at the names of the conspirators and de- 

 clared that measures should be taken to secure 

 their sequestration in the town with a musical 

 name on the east bank of the Hudson. 



So crude a contraction of currency would not 

 be possible to-day and even when Jay Gould imi- 

 tated it three years later it inspired no terror 

 and the effect was comparatively slight, but the 

 power to affect it on a vastly greater scale, or 

 to expand it indefinitely is held by an intangible 

 combination, if not by a single individual, be- 

 yond any possible control by slow-moving gov- 

 ernment methods. The cartoon of the cow with 

 its head in the grain fields of the West and its 

 udder in Wall Street has long applied to the 

 people and the pool. And the cow has been 

 milked so adroitly that though a cow it has 

 purred like a pussy-cat. 



