credits, which was erected at first, as the recurring panics
disclosed, on sand, but gradually, through costly experience, on
a more stable foundation.

The economic and industrial development of the time demanded not
only new money and credit but new men. A new type of executive
was wanted, and he soon appeared to satisfy the need. Neither a
capitalist nor a merchant, he combined in some degree the
functions of both, added to them the greater function of
industrial manager, and received from great business concerns a
high premium for his talent and foresight. This Captain of
Industry, as he has been called, is the foremost figure of the
period, the hero of the industrial drama.

But much of what is admirable in that generation of nation
builders is obscured by the industrial anarchy which prevailed.
Everybody was for himself--and the devil was busy harvesting the
hindmost. There were "rate-wars," "cut-rate sales," secret
intrigues, and rebates; and there were subterranean passages--
some, indeed, scarcely under the surface--to council chambers,
executive mansions, and Congress. There were extreme fluctuations
of industry; prosperity was either at a very high level or
depression at a very low one. Prosperity would bring on an
expansion of credits, a rise in prices, higher cost of living,
strikes and boycotts for higher wages; then depression would
follow with the shutdown and that most distressing of social
diseases, unemployment. During the panic of 1873-74 many
thousands of men marched the streets crying earnestly for work.

Between the panics, strikes became a part of the economic routine