This was the last of the series of meetings between the Government officials and the National Bank Presidents preceding the panic.
Everything was now ready to give the country the “Object-Lesson.”
Within the next forty-eight hours the worst financial calamity that ever befell the people was to break upon them.
At this time there was nothing in the industrial situation to precipitate a panic. Prices had been low for several years, and there was none of the spirit of speculation which usually precedes a panic.
Cleveland himself volunteered to say: “Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions relating to our natural resources, nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side.”
Thus the people and all those engaged in industrial and productive enterprises are exonerated.
Who are the guilty persons?
The men who did just what that Panic Bulletin describes.
The bankers who demanded the practical demonetization of silver; who demanded a special session of Congress to secure it; who called in their loans and reduced their circulation; who demanded and secured the issue of bonds, and who now demand the retirement of the greenbacks.
Messrs. Branch and Reynolds and other National Bank advocates may be able to repudiate the Panic Bulletin, but they cannot successfully deny that every feature of the program it contained was carried out in detail by the men who practically control the National Bank system.