community is not
yet as well ordered as that of England or another older country; and
since the foregoing paragraphs were written, the panic which fell upon
the United States in the closing months of 1907 has occurred. The
country had enjoyed a decade of extraordinary financial prosperity, in
the course of which, in the spirit of speculation which has already been
mentioned, all values had been forced to too high a level, credits had
been extended beyond the margin of safety, and the volume of business
transactions had swollen to such bulk in proportion to the amount of
actual monetary wealth in existence that any shock to public confidence,
any nervousness resulting in a contraction of the circulating medium,
could not fail to produce catastrophe. The shock came; as sooner or
later it had to come. In the stern period of struggle and retrenchment
which followed, all the weak spots in the financial and industrial
fabric of the country have been laid bare and, while depression and
distress have spread over the whole United States, until all parts are
equally involved, not only have the exposures of anything approaching
dishonest or illegitimate methods been few, but the way in which the
business communities at large have stood the strain has shown that there
is nothing approaching unsoundness in the general business conditions.
With the system of credit shattered and with hardly circulating medium
enough to conduct the necessary petty transactions of everyday life, the
country is already recovering confidence and feeling its way back to
normal conditions. The results have not been approximately as bad as
those which followed the panic of 1893; and the difference is an index
to the immensely greater stability of the country's industries.
Meanwhile there was at first (and still exists) a feeling of intense
indignation in all parts of the country that so much suffering should
have been thrown upon the whole people by the misbehaviour of a small
circle of men in New York. The experience, however painful, will in the
long run be salutary. It will be salutary in the first place for the
obvious reason that business will have to start again conservatively and
with inflated values reduced to something below normal levels. But it
will be even more salutary for the less obvious reason that it has
intensified the already acute disgust of the business men of the country
as a whole with what are known as "Wall Street methods." Englishme