as 1881 a retrograde movement began, only to end in the disasters in
question. The decline in prices had been steady for three years; they
had sunk little by little under the influence of a ruinous competition,
caused by the number of new lines and the lowering of rates, but above
all through the manipulations by the managers on a scale unexampled
until now. In connection with the disasters of May, 1884, the names of
certain speculators who misused other people's money, such as Ward, of
Grant & Ward; Fish, President of the Marine Bank; and John C. Eno, of
the Second National Bank, will long be remembered. General Grant, who
was a silent partner in Ward's concern, was an innocent sufferer, both
in fortune and reputation.

The Marine Bank suspended on the 5th of May, and in the following week
the Metropolitan drew down in its train a large number of bankers and
houses of the second order. The confusion was then at its height. Owing
to the very delicate mechanism of the credit circulation, the banks and
the clearing house were the first attacked and the most shaken, but they
immediately formed themselves into a syndicate to resist the storm which
was upsetting all about them. As cheques were no longer paid,
settlements no longer took place, and the credit circulation was
suspended; this stoppage was liable to induce the greatest consequences,
hence it was necessary to be very circumspect. Here it was not possible
to suspend the law, as in England the Act of 1844 was suspended,
permitting an excess of the official limit for the note issue, but the
banks could have been empowered to demand authority to change the
proportion enacted by the law creating National Banks. They had no
recourse to any of these violations of the Statutes, which prove only
too often under such circumstances that regulation by law is impossible;
they satisfied themselves, without having the public powers intervene,
with issuing clearing-house certificates, that is to say, promises,