The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems

by Frank A. Fetter

§ II. CRISES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

No financial crises in the Middle Ages

1. The periods of industrial hardship in the Middle Ages were connected with adverse conditions of production, not with the collapse of prices. Periods of exceptional hardship in medieval times were mostly due to political oppression, famine, wars, pestilence, and scourges of nature. There being very little of the money economy, there was no development of credit and of credit prices. The money economy began, as has been noted, in the cities. As the use of money spread, as larger commercial enterprises were undertaken, as borrowing and the payment of interest became common, there began to appear in city trading circles, on a small scale, the phenomena of the modern crisis.

European crises of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

2. In Europe general industrial crises date from 1763 and have occurred at more or less regular intervals since. It frequently is said that the cycle, or period, of crises is ten years, but it takes an elastic imagination to find support for this in history. The crises of the eighteenth century occurred in 1763, 1783, 1793, these dates marking the close of wars of some magnitude. The crises were not widespread or general, but were more marked in England, which was most developed industrially and in its money economy. Likewise in the nineteenth century, the crises were of unequal force in the various countries, usually being severer in England. The English crises may be roughly dated 1803, 1825, 1838, 1847, 1857, 1864, 1875, 1890. These were attributed to various causes; that of 1825 to over-trading abroad; that of 1847 to railroad-building; that of 1864 to the interruption of the cotton trade and of commerce, as a result of the Civil War in America. While in many parts of England the crisis of 1864 was unusually severe, in other countries it was of little moment. Germany, after several years of great speculative prosperity, had a most severe crisis in 1875; while France (a somewhat significant fact), although prostrated by the war of 1870-71, losing a large amount of wealth, and paying a thousand millions of dollars to Germany as a war indemnity, escaped a commercial crisis almost entirely at that time.

Crises in the United States

3. In the United States there have been five marked crises: the first in 1817, the last in 1893. These crises were of date 1817-20, 1837-39, 1857, 1873, 1893. Major crises thus occurred about twenty years apart, and minor crises in several instances alternated with them, notably in 1866, 1884, and we might add, 1903. These crises were the culmination of different kinds of speculation, usually spoken of as their causes. The crisis of 1817 was due to over-trading and to the immense importation following the war of 1812 and the resumption of commerce with Europe in 1816. In 1837-39 came in quick succession two crises, not quite distinct from each other, the second similar to the relapse of a fever patient. The immediate occasions were over-speculation in lands, a great issue of bank money, national expansion, and over-confidence, possibly in some degree the heedless financial measures of Andrew Jackson. The crisis of 1857 followed a period of great prosperity marked by the discovery of gold in California in 1848, by great expansion of commerce, by the building of railroads, and by a great increase in foreign trade. The crisis of 1873, probably the severest in our history, is attributable to great speculation, especially to railroad-building on an unexampled scale following the war. The blow, when it fell, was intensified by the contraction of currency leading to the return to a specie basis and lower prices. The crisis of 1884, a comparatively slight one, occasioned (rather than caused) by the discussion of the money question, was followed by some years of noticeable depression. The years 1889 to 1892 witnessed a prosperity that culminated in a crisis in September, 1893, (likewise generally explained as due to the unsettled state of our monetary system) followed by a period of depression lasting until 1897.

The period from 1897 to 1903 has been marked by great prosperity and by rising prices. The over-hasty prophecies of collapse in the last two years have thus far been falsified,[3] but there is now a general feeling of distrust in investing circles. Already there has been a reduction of dividends in leading industries, and here and there a fall in the value of stocks. High prices have greatly checked building. The great credit advances made on "industrials," the stocks of manufacturing corporations, are one of the main sources of danger. Caution, however, has been learned by experience; the banking interests are more closely coördinated and give better mutual support than in the past, and a considerable decline in stocks has already occurred without as yet affecting general prices of commodities. Various novel features in the situation make prophecy difficult, but a period of liquidation and lower prices appears to be at hand.