Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed
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The crucial fact, in this epoch of commercial catastrophes, is not thestoppage of Smith, Jones, and Robinson,—nor the suspension of speciepayments by a greater or less number of banks,—but the paralysis of thetrade of the civilized globe. We have had presented to us, within thelast quarter, the remarkable, though by no means novel, spectacle ofa sudden overthrow of business,—in the United States, in England, inFrance, and over the greater part of the Continent.
At a period of profound and almost universal peace,—when there had beenno marked deficit in the productiveness of industry, when there hadbeen no extraordinary dissipation of its results by waste andextravagance,—when no pestilence or famine or dark rumor of civilrevolution had benumbed its energies,—when the needs for its enterprisewere seemingly as active and stimulating as ever,—all its habitualfunctions are arrested, and shocks of disaster run along the groundfrom Chicago to Constantinople, toppling down innumerable well-builtstructures, like the shock of some gigantic earthquake.
Everybody is of course struck by these phenomena, and everybody hashis own way of accounting for them; it will not, therefore, appearpresumptuous in us to offer a word on the common theme. Let it bepremised, however, that we do not undertake a scientific solution ofthe problem, but only a suggestion or two as to what the problem itselfreally is. In a difficult or complicated case, a great deal is oftenaccomplished when the terms of it are clearly stated.
It is not enough, in considering the effects before us, to say thatthey are the results of a panic. No doubt there has been a panic, acontagious consternation, spreading itself over the commercial world,and strewing the earth with innumerable wrecks of fortune; but thataccounts for nothing, and simply describes a symptom. What is the causeof the panic itself? These daring Yankees, who are in the habit ofbraving the wildest tempests on every sea, these sturdy English, whomarch into the mouths of devouring cannon without a throb, these gallantFrenchmen, who laugh as they scale the Malakoff in the midst of belchingfires, are not the men to run like sheep before an imaginary terror.When a whole nation of such drop their arms and scatter panic-stricken,there must be something behind the panic; there must be somethingformidable in it, some real and present danger threatening a verypositive evil, and not a mere sympathetic and groundless alarm.
Neither do we conceive it as sufficiently expressing or explaining thewhole facts of the case, to say that the currency has been deranged.There has been unquestionably a great derangement of the currency; butthis may have been an effect rather than a cause of the more generaldisturbance; or, again, it may have been only one cause out of manycauses. In an article in the first number of this magazine, thefinancial fluctuations in this country are ascribed to the alternateinflation and collapse of our factitious paper-money. Adopting theprevalent theory, that the universal use of specie in the regulationof the international trade of the world determines for each nation theamount of its metallic treasure