102 Frank 8. PlUlbrick 



This latter really tells the true story of the conduct of 

 each section, since it weighs in a way the other does not 

 the particular factors of improvidence, misfortune, or dis- 

 honesty. If we talve the liahilities for 1893-95, the North- 

 west also makes a particularly bad showing, just as in 

 1893, in failures due to "disasters," "lack of capital," "un- 

 wise credits," and a far worse showing than in 1893 in 

 "inexperience" and failures "due to the failure of others." 

 The Pacific continued its bad showing in "speculation" ; 

 the South increased "fraud," and diminished "extrava- 

 gance." The West also increased "fraud" and its high 

 liabilities under "disaster" continued. The ^fiddle greatly 

 decreased the element of "fraud," and other sections and 

 causes showed no very particular feature. 



On the whole the South makes a suspiciously^ shady 

 showing, which can onl}^ be accounted for by health or 

 weakness continued from an early crisis date. The good 

 showing of the East shows not only weakness ("failure 

 of others"), but strength ("disaster" cause above) in the 

 business system, and the qualities of business men also 

 show fairly conservative — certainly not more than that. 

 The other features are not especially surprising save the 

 enormous "speculation" and "neglect of business" in the 

 Pacific section. 



If we look at the total number of failures in each sec- 

 tion by all causes we get the measure in number of the 

 failures of the severity of the crisis absolutely, whereas 

 the above figures showed the severity for each section in 

 1893 compared with 1892, and for different sections in 

 1893 compared with one another. Instead of retaining 

 large numbers I have taken the actual number of failures 

 in the East for 1892 as 100 (although the actual number 

 was 1,059) and reduced all figures to this basis. Then we 

 get the following figures : 



308 



