J my 6, 1882] 



NATURE 



227 



true crisis. But such as it was, this crisis turned out to 

 be just one of those exceptions which prove the rule. The 

 following statistics of bankruptcy in the United Kingdom, 

 as collected by Messrs. Kemp, and published in the 

 Mercantile Gazette, show conclusively that the real 

 collapse came in exact accordance with the decennial 

 theory in the autumn of 187S or early in 1879 : — 



Year. Number of 



bankruptcies. 



1S70 8,151 



1871 8,164 



1872 8,112 



1873 9,064 



I874 9,250 



1875 9.194 



Year. Number of 



bankruptcies. 



1876 10,848 



1877 ".247 



1S7S 13.630 



1S79 15.732 



1880 12,471 



18S1 11,632 



It will be remembered that the crisis of 1878 was 

 precipitated by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank 

 owing to great losses of their customers in the Indian 



trade, the depression of that trade being caused by the 

 recent famine in India. 



As a good deal of misapprehension has arisen concern- 

 ing the American Crisis of 1873, it is well to quote the 

 following valuable statistics from the Annual Circulars of 

 Messrs. R. G. Dun's mercantile agency : — 



Year Number of Amount of liabilities 



failures. in dollars. 



. . . 5> l6 3 228,589,000 



. . . 5,830 155,239,000 



• • • 7.74° 201,060,353 



. . . 9.°9 2 191,117,786 



. . . 8,872 190,669,936 



• • • 10,478 234,383,132 



. . . 6,658 98,149,053 



• • • 4.735 65,752,000 



• • • 5.582 81,155,932 



1873. 



1874, 



i875 • 

 1876 



1877. 

 1878 

 1879 

 1880 



Although the amount of liabilities involved in the failures 



of 1S73 was larger than in any subsequent year except 

 1878, the number of failures was less than in any year 

 named except 1880. The average liability of each failure 

 in 1S73 was $44,274 compared with [22,369 in 1878. It is 



thus apparent that the crises differed entirely in character, 

 and I believe that the collapse of 1S73 was mainly due to 

 the breakdown of values of properties necessarily follow- 

 ing sooner or later upon the contraction of the paper 



