If you look back over your life for a period, or if you look around you, you will discover that any normal man of our time touches life at more angles-has a wider and richer experience than most men could have at any preceding time. In a word, life under modern conditions is wide and varied to a degree undreamed of in old times. And for the successful and efficient man modern life has a great variety of conveniences. The machinery of organization saves us time and trouble and ministers to us every hour of the day from giving us tropical fruits for breakfast and the news of the world for a cent, to caring for property by trust companies and making it possible to travel around the world on a single ticket. This same perfect machinery of modern organizations insures our health-if we are wise-prolongs our lives, reimburses us for silver taken by the burglar, insures our crops against cyclones; it makes life and fortune safe and leaves us time and mind to give to the most important or the most pleasant business that we select to do. And we take this wide variety of interests and activities for granted. We take for granted, too, all the conveniences of modern life. We have a right to them all, and we live our lives so as to profit by them. Besides our wide range of activities and interests and the multitude of conveniences, we take for granted and depend on efficiency of service by the great machinery of modern life. The newspaper appears every morning; the train comes on schedule time; the man who owes you money pays it when it is due; and so on. And we have a right to count on the efficiency of our great organizations. We plan our lives by taking this for granted. II Now this statement of the variety of the activities of the normal efficient man, of his multitudinous conveniences, and of the elaborate organization of things for confort and convenience is a dull commonplace. Every man who deserves to live takes all these things for granted and goes on with his life, profiting by them. He goes on till-all on a sudden-what is supposed to be, and what surely ought to be, the best-organized, the safest, the most efficient machinery of all stops; the whole financial machine stops as a clock stops when the a clock stops when the earth quakes. You may have put money into the bank. Like as not, you couldn't get it the next day. You may own a good bond; like as not, its price falls, falls, fallswithout any reference to the value of the property or the earnings of the business that it stands for. Why? All the economic doctors tell you why; but hardly any two agree and not one makes an explanation that is so simple as to be obvious. There's something "mysterious" about it. "mysterious" about it. Nobody quite understands why. Then you discover that in a jiffy the variety is all gone out of life. Instead of pursuing his bread-earning work calmly and devoting some of his time to other things, everybody you know turns his mind to only this one subject. Will I fail? Is my money safe? What about the future? No matter how skilful or efficient a man may be, he is set to wondering whether he will ever get any more profits or earn any more money, or have a chance again to go on in a normal way. Life loses its variety of interests and diversions, and one vast fear darkens the horizon; and men think so much about money that greed assumes the aspect of a virtue. And the very conveniences of life are threatened. True, your morning paper continues to come; but you wish that it wouldn't, so full is it of tales of disaster, of the suicides of financiers, of rumors of more trouble, of the slackening of industry. The very conveniences of life become a nuisance, and one of the greatest conveniences of all-the banks and the trust companies-seemed likely to fail us. As for their doing their work with a silent efficiency that ought to be taken for granted, they utterly fall short; or (which is much the same thing), they suffer from fears that they may fail. For the time being this important part of the machinery of life is a practical failure. It causes you trouble rather than gives you help. You may live in a town in New Mexico, or you may live in Pittsburg-wherever you live, you had for a time fiat money offered you. You were told that the failure of certain banks and trust companies in New York had unsettled the financial world, and because of the crimes and mismanagement of a few men in New York you must take a printed promise of a dollar for a dollar-in New Mexico or in Oregon. What on earth had your town and your bank to do with a handful of bad men who live across the continent from you? SECRETARY OF THE INLAND WATERWAYS COMMISSION, WHICH IS INVESTIGATING [See "The March of Events," page 9729-) Or you were told that the President of the United States had acted as a bull in a chinashop and broken all the vases of credit in the country. You couldn't see the logic of such an explanation; but, no matter, you got the annoyance; your life was stopped in its normal course, and you had time to wonder how on earth all these things could be. Then you read that a few other men, strong, good men, threw their millions into the hole in public confidence in New York and that everything would come right-that Mr. Morgan had somehow done something that would in a little while make your credit dollar a good dollar, and still you wondered how Mr. Morgan in New York could affect the financial affairs, down to the value of a local dollar, in your remote town; and you were never sure that the explanation which was glibly made to you by your editor or your banker was the right explanation. It wasn't easily intelligible. It seemed confused. It wasn't simple and obvious. III This is not a grotesque nor an exaggerated statement of the feelings of most men of intelligence and of normal activities in the United States a month ago; and the feeling was warranted. If, at the very flood-tide of a prosperous era, when the crops are bountiful (and the mischief happened right at harvest-time, too), when our factories and mines had all been making money, when the railroads had more products to haul than they had cars or locomotives to carry them, we were all called on suddenly to halt because something was the matter with money or with credit-surely this is proof that this part, at least, of our machinery of civilization is far from perfect. This is the sort of experience that fits frontier communities, not the richest and most 'aborately organized nation in the world. And then the damage was supposed to be mended as mysteriously and almost as suddenly as it had been inflicted. What wonder that many simple folk ask themselves if our great financial machinery be not so organized or conducted that a few great men may play pranks with it for their own profit whenever they choose to do so. Something is wrong somewhere, be it our banking system, be it our currency, be it the concentration of capital, be it the too rapid growth of our industries, or be it old wars on the other side of the world-whatever it be, something is wrong in our organization of things. Other countries have not, in recent years, at least, suffered such sharp attacks to the unsettling of all activities. Why should our country? Yet, when we ask these questions, the loudest voices that we hear are the voices of quacks who have heal-alls for every ailment of civilization, and there is not an authoritative plan of prevention that all sensible men will agree upon. Somebody somewhere has too much power for good or for mischief under our present system of financial organization. Or, have we a rational plan of financial organization, at all? Till we get beyond the reach of such panics as this last one, we can hardly boast of our financial system. The whole experience seems like a nightmare or a revel of idiocy. IV And the worst of it was not the fall in values nor the sudden brake put on industry, bad as these were. To go back where we beganto the state of mind and the plan of life of a normal man-we see how such men's lives were swung from their usual orbit. Men who gave only proper thought to moneygetting-regarding money as a tool to do worthy tasks with-were thrown off their balance. Everybody went money-mad for the time being. the time being. No company of insane men presents a more pathetic spectacle than the panic-stricken throngs that made runs on certain banks or that rushed frantically about the financial district of New York. The thought of the whole people-even those who had no deposits in the banks-was on money, money, money; and by the time some wretched bank presidents had killed themselves in New York, the people in interior towns couldn't imagine where all the cash in the country had suddenly hid itself. Everybody's mind was on money. It was a sordid and vulgar experience, a degrading diversion from normal activities and from a life of decent mental poise and steady work. Thus a large part of the well-balanced persons in the United States whose lives are not given to the race for wealth seemed to justify the taunt that we are all money-mad; and this by no fault whatsoever of the normal part of the country's population. 9724 THE COUNTRY AS A CRITIC OF NEW YORK HERE is a widespread notion that the bitter toward New York and especially toward Wall Street, upon which they lay the blame for financial flurries and panics, rather than upon our currency or banking system. Ex-Senator Stewart, of Nevada, for example, was recently quoted as saying that at some time we should have a civil war between the East and the West. It is hard accurately to distinguish temporary emotions from representative public opinion on such a subject. But side-lights like the following have some interest. An Eastern college president, who during the weeks of the panic visited institutions of learning in eight or ten states of the Mississippi Valley, found almost everywhere the feel ing that the seat of the wrong is in New York -a more or less vague but persistent notion. It is in New York that the great rich men live, that the great financial transactions are carried on, that the great accumulations of capital are controlled, and that the most conspicuous financial wrong-doers operate. Therefore, the main mischief is done there and thence spreads throughout the land; and many educated people were bitter toward New York. A salesman for a wholesale house who traveled through Michigan and Ohio during the weeks of highest excitement found his customers in the cities and larger towns unwilling to buy anything, and some of them even in a mood to cancel previous orders. They were in a panic of uncertainty. But, as soon as he went to small towns, where the merchants deal directly with the farmers, he took good orders. There was no uncertainty there-except that the farmers themselves were somewhat anxious about the money that they had in banks. The people in the small towns and in the country had no panic and no especial trouble, and they had no quarrel with anybody. In the In the larger towns many persons blamed the newspapers. If they had not kept crying panic, nobody would have known that there was a panic. The local bankers had anxious days because much of their money was in New York or Chicago; and, if it should turn out that they could not get it quickly, they might face disaster. But they did get it. Few persons realize what enormous sums were sent into the interior from New York. For instance, during the five weeks ending November 22d, New York sent to the interior more than 83 million dollars. During the corresponding weeks of less than 13 millions. In a word, New York sent inland 5 millions more than all the gold imports and all the Government deposits of that period. Much of this money was, of course, money that belonged to the interior; but when it was sent home so quickly and in such an enormous volume, the interior has no reason to criticize New York on that score. The hoarding of money was done quite as much in the interior as in the East, and apparently much more. It must be remembered, too, that the inland towns and cities sent their accumulations to New York in the first place-and they send them continually in normal times—in order to receive the high rate of interest that can be got on call loans and in other ways. When they send it in periods of profit, they have no right to complain about its being here in times of danger. And, whatever be the temporary outcry, the accumulations of the country will come to New York again when money is higher here than in local markets. Economic laws overrule sentiment. It is the interior bankers and business men, in fact, who make New York what it is. It is of in great measure their money-the money the country in general-that goes to make the large accumulations in the financial centre. It flows in obedience to an economic demand. But it flows so easily under normal conditions that much money which might profitably be invested at home comes away into these great reservoirs. For instance, many an interior town which ought to improve its own traction service, waits until a promoter comes from a big city and buys it and issues bonds and improves it and transfers its real ownership to some big money centre. Local men and local money ought to have done the task in the first place and kept all the profits at |