stem--and the
event has proved its unsoundness--for new companies to rely from
the outset upon this source for the means of construction. It was a
hand-to-mouth policy, resting upon so precarious a foundation that, in
the light of experience, we can only wonder that eminent and otherwise
conservative bankers should have adopted it to the extent they did,
thereby not only jeopardizing their own position, but imperiling the
whole financial community. About six thousand miles of new railways
were constructed in the United States in 1872, of which it may be
estimated that at least seven-eighths were in advance of the national
requirements. Not a few of those now unfinished or just completed
will, like the New York and Oswego Midland, be forced into bankruptcy,
and it will be long before all the ruins left by the crisis will be
cleared away. A shock has been given to the entire railway interest of
the country, the full effect of which has not yet been felt; and those
who expect the prices of railway securities to rule as high, for a
considerable period to come, as they did before the panic, are
likely to be disappointed. After all panics we have had more or less
wearisome stagnation and depression, growing out of impoverishment
and distrust of new ventures; and this last one will hardly prove an
exception to the rule. The mercantile interest, too, will probably
continue for some time to suffer in consequence of the monetary
derangements resulting from it and the want of adequate banking--or
rather currency--facilities for bringing forward cotton and general
produce from the West and South for shipment; and here and there
houses that have so far withstood the strain will break down under it.
But in a rapidly growing country, with inexhaustible resources, like
this, recovery from such disasters is, fortunately, far quicker than
among the less progressive nations of Europe.

One eminently satisfactory feature of the panic in securities was,
that it did not extend to United States bonds, greenbacks or National
bank-notes. Bonds were of course depressed in sympathy with the
scarcity of money and the demoralization prevailing in the general
stock market, but there was not the slightest loss of confidence in
them among holders, nor any pressure to sell, except to relieve urgent
necessities among the banks and others having need of currency. The
paper money of the country proved itself the most valuable kind of
property that any on