Financial crises and periods of industrial and commercial depression

Front matter

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CHAPTER II General Facts concerning Crises and Depressions. Periodicity 18

Two classes of disturbances — Relation between them — Depressions without preceding crises — The periodicity of crises — Probable duration of the successive stages of the cycle — Season of the year at which crises occur — Do crises appear only in highly developed countries? — Distinguished as local or general — Degree of severity in different countries — The argument that depressions benefit a majority.

CHAPTER III The Phenomena of Crises and Depressions, and the

Events precedino them 49

Events preceding them — A crisis preceded by a season of activity — Preceding indications — The phenomena of crises and periods of depression.

T

Tl CRISES AND DEPRESSIONS

CHAPTER IV Causes op Ceises and Depressions 64

Different theories — Responsible cause — Elementary definitions — Fundamental propositions concerning capital — Forms of derangement of capital — Direct loss or waste — Indirect loss or waste — Changes resulting from modern industrial and commercial progress — Absorption of capital and its effect upon foreign trade — Results of invention and improved methods — Progress from the standpoint of consumption — Incidental features, overaction, speculation, and fraud — Distinctive quality of recent depressions — Alleged causes, lack of confidence, abuse of credit, readjustment because of changes in values or prices, contraction of the circulating medium or an insuffieient volume of money, over-production, psychological tendencies, military armaments, and the liquor traffic — Severe because unexpected — Results of waste postponed.

CHAPTER V Indications of Prosperity or Depression . . . 136 Employment of labour — Foreign trade, general relation between exports and imports, balance of trade, varying proportion in new and developing countries and in creditor countries — Income taxes — Excise or internal revenue taxes — Bank clearances — Production and prices, agricultural production, iron and steel — Railway tonnage and earnings — Bankruptcies — Social statistics — Other statistics — General tendencies.

CHAPTER VI Indications op the Approach op a Crisis or Depression 184

Banking statistics, loans, deposits, paper currency, rates of interest, relation between specie and loans.

CONTENTS Tix cash and loans, reserves. Foreign trade, exports and imports of merchandise and of gold — Significance of gold exports or imports in the United States — Rate of exchange — Prices, and general business conditions — Prices of commodities, iron and steel, securities, especially stocks — Conditions in other countries.

Chapter VII

Established laws, governmental control by legislation and administration — Function of the Federal Treasury as a bank of issue and as a bank of deposit — Issuance of paper money — Elasticity — The Subtreasury system — Certainty as to specie payments — EfEect of changes and agitation — Statistical information — Relation of the State to corporations. The management of banks — Rules as to lending — Effect of furnishing capital by discount — Reserves — Diminishing proportion of capital to loans — Inspection of State banks — Individual action — ^Remedies.

CHAPTER VIII Brief Account of Crises and Depressions in the United States 270

Crisis of 1814— Crisis of 1818-'19— Period from 1819 to 1837— Crisis of 1837— Period from 1837 to 1857— Crisis of 1857 — Special features in the United States in 1857 and preceding years — Period from 1857 to 1873 —Crisis of 1873— Period from 1879 to 1890— Period from 1890 to date — Present outlook — Increase in the production o£ gold.