Bank balances reflected this
startlingly. On February 26, 1891, loans and discounts and over-drafts
amounted to $1,927,654,559.80. On May 4, 1891, loans and discounts and
over-drafts amounted to $1,969,-$46,379.67. On the former date capital,
deposits, surplus, and undivided profits amounted to $2,462,456,677.92,
and on the latter date to $2,567,288,143.45.
On July 9, 1891, discounts, loans, and over-drafts amounted to
$1,963,704,948.07, and capital, deposits, surplus, and undivided profits
to $2,522,609,679.78.
Confidence is restored and prices have advanced, and should advance
still further. There seem to be only three things that could check the
advancing market, and of those the two chief ones seem pretty surely
relegated to a fairly distant future. These latter two are, in the order
of importance: (1) a free silver law, _i.e._, a law making, say, 67
cents' worth of silver pass for an equivalent of a 100-cent dollar; and
(2) a very radical and abrupt change in our tariff law. The remaining
and very minor influence is the breaking out of a general European war,
which would at first induce a selling of our securities, and so lower
prices, but which finally and shortly would benefit us by a subsequent
returning flood of money exchanged for our various bread-stuffs, and
supplies, and even securities of different sorts.
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