Then will come a readjustment of our trade. Money will have become
actually or potentially scarce because of the previous vast expansion of
our business, and all the banking power of our country will be requisite
to prevent a crashing panic. The Reserve Banks will have gotten fully to
work by then, it is to be hoped. They will be needed to lead in the
life-saving operations. Such first aid to the injured will obviate such
financial sufferings as the old-time panics presented. They can hardly
be expected to reduce the casualties to the volume of the slow panic in
securities in the year 1913, for the volume of business involved at
present is vastly more swollen and the kind more circumscribed.
It is interesting to note that panics have continued to appear about as
regularly as usual, but less crushingly, since 1890, the date up to
which the first and second editions of this book had traced them.
Remedial or partially preventive measures have been more and more
utilized by the financial powers to control them. Never will panics
cease so long as trade and fear are exemplified on this earth, but just
as modern medicine is overcoming the dangers threatening the physical
man, so is modern finance overcoming panic and the other dangers which
threaten financial stability.
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