62 W. G. Langzvorthy Taylor 



dency was extremely varied and formed a salient feature of the 

 crisis process. The checkered history of the trusts, the invest- 

 ment companies, the land mortgage companies of the eighties — 

 not to speak of the fluctuations of credit in a banking sense, and 

 of commodity prices — were all part of a great socio-industrial 

 attempt to adapt the psychic conjuncture directly to the more 

 mobile portions of the materialistic conjuncture, while the latter 

 was also not through with the work of adapting itself to the more 

 fixed parts of the materialistic environment. The attempt, of 

 course, was not wholly successful and the great crisis of 1893 

 followed. 



The ground was cleared for a new psychic structure of organ- 

 ization and credit. The work went on slowly and cautiously. 

 Complete liquidation was insisted upon so late as 1896. The 

 absolute necessity of the largest possible scale of organization 

 was well understood, and the public was constantly assured that 

 all estimates of values were conservative. Doubtless an effort in 

 that direction was made. But the steady and uninterrupted rise 

 of prices, 1898-1901, and the continued capitalization of "trusts" 

 in round numbers of incomprehensible amount tell the old, old 

 story. There was, however, a distinct change in the psychic 

 conjuncture between the periods of adaptation preceding and 

 succeeding the crisis of 1893. The preceding period had been 

 one of doubt in the industrial world as to the necessity and prac- 

 ticability of the larger organization. The post-crisis period, after 

 the last liquidating wave of 1896,, exhibited no doubt on this 

 score. In fact, the long drawn period of depression and liqui- 

 dation, 1893-97 (in fact, taking a broader world-view, 1890-97), 

 was due probably to a consciousness of the magnitude of the task 

 of reorganization, which was not to be undertaken lightly, and 

 in an environment which was uninviting for small and hence 

 quickly organized businesses. 



If, however, the economic mind has fairly adopted the habit 

 of large organization, the same can not be said of the political. 

 What was true of the economic mind in the ninth decade is still 

 true of the political mind : it is at a loss to accommodate itself 

 to the new economic environment. It is from this fundamentally 



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