[57] It is truthfully declared by Courtois, in his Traité des Opérations de Bourse et de Change, that a fictitious movement, even on the part of the most powerful operators, cannot overcome the natural tendencies of values, and that the most that can be accomplished is sometimes to hasten or retard slightly the certain effect of a foreseen event. “Wall Street and the Country,” by Charles A. Conant, p. 88, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1904.
[58] The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 1912.
[59] The distinction between “panics,” “crises,” and “depressions,” are clearly stated in the opening chapter of “Financial Crises and Periods of Industrial and Commercial Depression,” by Theodore E. Burton, D. Appleton & Co., N. Y., 1902. In the following pages, I use the terms as they are commonly applied in Wall Street, although this application is not always governed by sound etymology. Thus in Wall Street we speak of “the panic of 1907,” meaning broadly the events of that entire year. Strictly speaking a “panic” is the brief period of a day or an hour of unreasoning fear, brought about by the “crisis” of a money scarcity which preceded it. The period of commercial and financial suffering, which continues after the panic and the crisis have passed, is the “depression.”
[60] “Des Crises Commerciales,” Clément Juglar, Paris, 1889, pp. 44–5.
[61] “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XXXV, No. 3, May, 1910, p. 13.
[62] “Financial Crises and Periods of Industrial and Commercial Depression,” Theodore E. Burton, New York, 1902, p. 234.
[63] The report of the New York State Superintendent of Banks for the same period emphasizes this point by showing a steady contraction of loans by State banks and trust companies of New York City during the period quoted, while all other authorities reveal a steady expansion in loans by similar institutions outside the city.
[64] “The Hughes Investigation,” by Horace White, Journal of Political Economy October, 1909, pp. 528–540. Mr. White quotes in this connection an article on “The Panic of 1907,” by Eugene Meyer, Jr., Yale Review, May, 1909, from which many facts in this chapter have been taken.
[65] Cf. Burton, supra, pp. 49–50–51.
[66] Ibid., pp. 227–8–9.