6: In reading them over, sixty years afterwards, she said
mournfully, "That has been the way all my life. Whenever I take a pen
in hand I always seem to be mounted on stilts." To those who are
acquainted with her simple, straightforward style of speaking, this
will seem hardly possible, yet it is probably one of the reasons which
led her, very early in her public career, to abandon all attempts at
written speeches.]

CHAPTER III.

FINANCIAL CRASH--THE TEACHER.

1838--1845.

The prosperous days of the Anthonys were drawing to a close. All
manufacturing industries of the country were in a ruinous state. The
unsound condition of the banks with their depreciated and fluctuating
currency had created financial chaos. Overproduction of cotton goods on
a credit basis, inordinate speculation, reduction of duties on
importations, produced the inevitable result, and the commercial world
began to totter on its foundations. The final ruin is foreshadowed in
the letters of Daniel Anthony. In one to his brother September 2, 1837,
he says:

I am going next week on a tour of the eastern cities and when I
return shall be prepared to face the situation. My goods at present
will not sell for the actual cost of manufacturing. Van Buren's
message has just made its appearance. It is opposed to banks and
may operate unfavorably to business, but how it can be worse I
don't know.

He writes from Washington to his wife, September 11:

I arrived last evening--came in R. Road cars from Baltimore, 39
miles, in two hours, over a barren and almost uncultivated tract of
country. The public buildings and one street called Pennsylvania
Avenue are all that are worth mention in this place.... As a
specimen of some of the big finery in the town, I will name one
room in Martin's [Van Buren's] house, 90 ft. by 42, the furniture
of which cost $22,000.... Our Congressmen are some like other
folks, they look out first for themselves. They have spent most of
this day in debating whether _they_ shall be paid in _specie_....
There are Black Folks in abundance here, but they don't act as if
they were even under the pressure of hard times, much less the
cruelties that we hear of slaves having to bear.

From New York he writes his brother:

Such times in everything that pertains to business never were known
in this land before. To-day I have passed through Pine street