sum not in
excess of what it had been twenty years before, when the paper money in
circulation was not half so great. Just as the West asked for more hard
money English bankers and other business men called sharply for payment
of outstanding debts due by leading business men in the East. Both
demands could not be met at the same time. The bubble had been pricked.

To make matters worse, the wheat crop of the Middle States and of the
South failed utterly, and the farmers were compelled to import grain on
credit for the next year's seeding. The cotton output was large, but the
price fell from twenty to ten cents a pound. Corn and meat were
plentiful in the West; the means of transportation were, however,
lacking. There was famine and plenty in the land at the same time.
Business came to a standstill, all forward movements stopped, and the
banks closed their doors.

From a winter of greatest plenty and most amazing expectations the
people, particularly the poor of the cities and mill towns, passed into
a summer and autumn of positive want and starvation. With flour at
twelve dollars a barrel, the New York price, and with wages declining
every day or industrial operations suspended altogether, the lot of the
worker was hard. Riots were of weekly occurrence, and the greatest
business houses of New York, Philadelphia, and even New Orleans, where
cotton was expected to save men, declared themselves bankrupt and closed
their doors. Men who had clamored against Jackson or Biddle in the time
of distress three years before now looked upon that crisis as only a
flurry. Everything seemed out of joint and the future gave no assurance
of speedy recovery. The East, which had condemned the West for their
stay laws against the panic of 1819, now clamored for a federal stay law
and urged Van Buren to suspend the specie circular. The President
refused to offer any relief, and other failures and other risks
followed. Before the summer had well begun every bank in the country
suspended specie payment, and a little later local business men's
associations issued notes or due bills in small denominations which were
accepted as money. East, South, and West the commercial and financial
panic held the country fast in its grip. Speculations fell flat,
obligations were void, and men turned to the simpler forms of life to
regain their equilibrium. Barter took the place of former methods of
exchange.

People blamed the banks; some cried out that th