railroad and other corporations, and business houses which had-some of thembreasted all the financial storms of the last half century, that these were finally obliged to succumb to the avalanche of pressure, and fell into the vortex of universal suspension. Tuesday, the thirteenth of October, the day preceding the suspension, was the climax of the struggle, and Wall street, New York, as the great center of money operations in the United States, presented a scene of wild excitement never before witnessed.

The account of that scene, as given by the reporter for the Tribune, is here in part reproduced. At ten o'clock in the

morning, says that journal, the fronts of the different institutions indicated, by the crowds gathered around them, that the ability of the vaults to yield up their treasure at the call of depositors and bill-holders was to undergo no ordinary test. Check after check was presented and paid, and still they came. Word soon went forth that a run had commenced on the banks, and it passed from one house to another until the whole lower part of the city was alive with excitement. Bank books were examined; but a moment was required to prepare a check-a signature

street-some rushing onward in the hope to secure their deposits before the hour of closing should arrive, and others clustered together, discussing the condition of affairs. One after another of the announcements made, of banks failing under the continued drain upon them, fell with dismay among the crowd, and confident predictions were uttered that ten o'clock of Wednesday would tell the story of the suspension of all. But not a few there were, whose belief in the ability of the moneyed institutions was still unshaken, and they asserted, with earnestness, that

every demand in checks and bills would be met to the last, and Panic be laughed

to scorn.

But, with all the anxiety and resoluteness depicted upon so many countenances, there were those who laughed and cracked jokes about their deposits in banks which had suspended, and about their stock in smashed-up railroads, as though the whole thing were a huge joke. From the top of Wall street to the bottom-from Broadway to Water street-the sidewalks were crowded with people, desirous to know the truth of the rumors which filled the air.

In other parts of the city, stirring scenes were transpiring, and not a few that were quite illustrative of human nature in its different veins. During the run upon the Bowery Savings Bank, an old Irishwoman, short, thick, resolute, and 'a little in for it,' made herself conspicuous by elbowing her way through the distrustful depositors, very unceremoniously, and denouncing, in no measured terms, "the big blackguards that would be afther chating a poor body out iv her hard earned wagis." Some order of precedence is customary at such times, but the heavy shoes. of the Irish woman did such execution upon the corns of all who stood in her way, that she soon obtained a good place near the door, in spite of the remonstrances of a dozen or two of younger Biddys, Maggies, Marys, and Kathleens, who had been waiting an hour or two. At the door, she At the door, she had a wordy quarrel with a broad-shouldered black man in advance of her, calling him a "runaway nagur;" and anon she varied her performances by shaking her fist in the face of a policeman-who, as an official conservator of the peace, had undertaken to check her, and, at length, very red and sweaty, she stood before the paying teller and presented her book, with a vocal invocation to him to do the clean thing. "What's this mean?" said he, looking at her somewhat impatiently. "What's your name?" "Can't yoos rade writin' hand?" she rejoined sharply; "shure, me nam's on the book!" "But this," said he, "is only a grocer's old pass book!

What's your name, I say ?" "Mary McRagan I was christened, but I married Pat Millikens." The teller turned rapidly to his index of depositors. "You have got no money in this bank!" said he, when he had ascertained the fact. She left the premises in company with an officer, to whom she confessed that she had found the pass book near the crowd, and thinking it had been dropped accidentally by a depositor, she had thought to obtain the money before the depositor applied for it. At the same bank, one man who drew out his deposits was so intoxicated that he could hardly stand; quite likely, he lost the savings of years before the night was over. At another savings bank, one poor girl had her pocket picked of her little all -about seventy-seven dollars, before she had got out of the crowd. A vast deal of chaffing occurred among those who thronged the doorways of the banks. "I don't know," said one to a bystander, "where to put my money when I get it!" "Give it to me," rejoined the other. "Sew it up in your shirt," said another; and several other methods were promptly and merrily suggested by the sympathizing spectators, such as "Stick it in your wig ""Let the old woman have it""Put it in your boots, and let me wear them;" etc.

At the Sixpenny Savings Bank, a little newsboy, without a jacket, and only one suspender (and that a string), confronted the teller on Monday, and demanded to know whether "She was all right"meaning the Institution-because if she was, he didn't mean to be scared, if everybody else was. He'd got forty-two cents salted down there, and all he wanted was his (the teller's) word of honor that it wouldn't spile. The teller assured him that his money was ready for him at any moment. "'Nuff said, 'tween gen'l'men, but I don't want it," rejoined the youth, and with a self-complacent, well-satisfied air, walked out of the bank. "Is she good?" cried two or three other newsboys who were awaiting the result, at the doorsteps. "Yes, s-i-r-r-e-e!" he replied,

as good as wheat. Ketch our bank to stop! Yoos ought to seed the gold I seed in der safe!" "How much was they?" inquired a companion. "More'n a housefull!" was the prompt response, "an' yoos don't ketch dis 'ere chile a-makin' an oold woman of his-self, an' drawin' out his money; I ain't so green-I ain't!"

It will require but little strain of the imagination to realize, to one's mind, the case of Mrs. Jones, who, on receipt of the news of the banks suspending specie payments, hastened to her savings bank, elbowed her way smartly to the desk, presented her book, and demanded her money. "Madam," said the clerk, persuasively, 66 are you sure you want to draw this money out in specie?"

"Mrs. Jones," said a director, with an oracular frown, "do you know that you are injuring your fellow depositors?"

"And setting an example of great folly to less educated persons in this community?" struck in another director.

"Let us advise you simply to reflect," interposed the clerk, blandly.

"To wait for a day, at least," said the director.

At last there was a pause.

Mrs. Jones had been collecting herself. She burst now. In a tone which was heard throughout the building, and above all the din of ordinary business, and at which her questioners turned ashy pale, she said:

"Will you pay me my money?—YES or NO!"

They paid her instantly.

Not only in the great centers of business and finance, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans, but in every town and village, the scarcity of money and the failure of banks and commercial houses, operated to paralyze industry and bring want to thousands of families. In consequence of the universal stoppage of factories, the poorer classes in some of the manufacturing communities saw winter approaching, with no prospect of earning a livelihood. Whole families began to suffer

for bread-the fathers willing and eager to work, but absolutely nothing to do. Tales of distress were to be heard at almost every step, for the factories, forges, and foundries, had all ceased their cheerful hum of activity, and every day's intelligence from different parts of the land was that of fresh accumulations of disaster, increasing the severity of the situation, and adding to the general gloom. The oldest, heaviest, richest, and firmest moneyed institutions, corporations, companies and firms, which were considered equal to any pressure that might be brought to bear against them, were daily chronicled as having "gone to the wall." Fortunes were swept away, like ashes in a whirlwind. Not even in 1837, when the banking system of the country was in so precarious a condition, was there such a terrible downfall of old and wealthy houses. At the west, there was one short, tremendous collapse, that seemed to bring ruin, at one quick blow, upon everything and everybody; and at the south, the devastation was no less wide-spread and fatal.

Various means were resorted to, to realize cash for stocks of goods on hand, even at a ruinous discount. At numberless shop windows were to be seen in staring letters, such announcements as: "These goods sold at wholesale prices.' 'Selling off at half cost.' 'Bargains to be had for two days-now or never!' 'We must realize ten thousand dollars to-day, at any sacrifice;' etc. Indeed, in all the large cities, the dry goods dealers, being severely pressed for money, offered their goods in this way, and effected large sales. A large number of the most prominent wholesale dealers threw open their vast warehouses to retail customers, and by this means, probably, not a few houses, of that class, managed to escape the hard fate that befell others.

Thus, in a word, there was exhibited the melancholy spectacle of a great nation's commercial, financial, manufacturing, and industrial interests in utter ruin, from one end of the broad land to the other; prosperity succeeded by abject adversity; con

fidence supplanted by total distrust; a paralysis of all trade; the stoppage of almost bank in every part of the every United States, the cessation of factories, the discharge of thousands of laborers, the inability to bring our large crops of produce to market, the ruinous rate of two or three per cent. a month on the strongest paper, and a ruinous depreciation in the price of all stocks. The steamers on the great rivers and lakes stood still; the canal boats ceased to ply; the railroad trains conveyed less than half the usual amount of travelers and merchandise; the navigating interest shared the common distress, so that the cargoes, brought from abroad, either passed into the public stores, or were re-exported at great loss; the freighting business was nearly annihilated. Alarmed, too, at the prospect before them, ship-loads of emigrants were taken home to their native land, in the packets running from Boston and New York to Europe. Nor did the fortune-tellers fail to drive a brisk business in informing ignorant and credulous inquirers what was to "turn up."

That this great national calamity had its root in the fever for land and railroad speculation, involving enormous debt, with no corresponding sound basis or adequate means, cannot be doubted. Mr. Gibbons, one of the very ablest of American financial writers, argues, in respect to this point, that, notwithstanding the appearances of prosperity previous to the panic, there existed all the conditions of extraordinary financial disturbance. A prodigious weight of insolvency had been carried along for years in the volume of trade. Extravagance of living had already sapped the foundations of commercial success, in hundreds of instances where credit supplied the place of lost capital. Mismanagement and fraud had gained footing in public companies to an incredible degree; hundreds of millions of bonds were issued with little regard to the validity of their basis, and pressed upon the market by dishonest agents, at any price, from sixty down to thirty cents on the dollar. False

quotations were obtained by sham auction sales. The newspaper press, in particular instances, was bribed into silence, or became a partner in the profits to be derived from the various schemes which it commended to general confidence. The land grants by congress to railway companies gave added impetus to speculation, and state legislatures were bribed to locate roads to serve individual interests. Public, as well as private credit, was compromised.

It could not be otherwise than that bankruptcy and an overwhelming crash should succeed such an inflated and precarious state of things. Even when trade and business are conducted in accordance with fair and legitimate rules, the records of insolvency among American merchants tell a woful tale. Thus, General Dearborn, who for twenty years was collector of the port of Boston, and who had ample opportunities for observing the vicissitudes of trade, ascertained, on investigation, that among every hundred of the merchants and traders of that city-whose character for carefulness and stability will compare favorably with that of merchants in any other portion of the land-not more than three ever acquired an independence. This conclusion was not arrived at without great distrust; but an experienced merchant, who was consulted, fully confirmed its truth. A Boston antiquarian in the year 1800 took a memorandum of every person doing business on Long Wharf, and in 1840 only five in one hundred remained; all but these had either failed or died insolvent. The Union Bank commenced business in 1798, there being then only one other bank. The Union was overrun with business, the clerks being obliged to work till midnight, and even on Sundays. An examination, some fifty or sixty years from the starting of the bank, showed that of one thousand accounts opened at the commencement, only six remained; all the others had either failed, or died insolvent,-houses whose paper had passed without question, the very parties who had constituted the solid men of the city, all had gone down in that period.

Of the direful havoc, therefore, created by a sudden and violent panic, sweeping over the whole country like a hurricane, some idea may be formed from the statistics here given.

Notwithstanding the resumption of business on a specie basis, in about tvo months from the time of their suspension,

| by most of those banks which were in a solvent condition, it was a long while before trade and industry recovered from their crippled state; and the embarrassment and suffering which consequently weighed, during so protracted a period, upon all classes of the community, were painful to the last degree.