• A good many Americans expect a severe financial crash
in New York. It is true the profits of the last two years have been very great, and the wheat crop of this year is expected to be enormous ; but there is a deficiency of currency, and a recent legal decision declaring, in effect, that one railway must not hold the shares of another, because such holding tends to produce monopoly, has greatly alarmed investors. There is still an appeal possible to the Supreme Court of the Union ; but American acuteness perceives that if monopolies are contrary to law, the Trusts, which establish monopolies or propose to establish them, are also contrary, and investors shrink back, proposing to wait till the questions at issue are cleared up. The Trust promoters will of course devise new plans ; but the rush to support them is over, and some of the millionaires must have been hit very hard. The total immediate fall has only been three points, but it has diffused a strong feeling of distrust. Mr. Pierpont Morgan says that is unreasonable, because the railways and mercantile companies of which the stocks have fallen are all sound concerns ; but that argument scarcely covers the whole ground. It proves that the country is no poorer ; but if you have to meet a bill on Monday with Consols at 90, the fact that they will be at par on Tuesday is a consolation only to the unconcerned looker-on.
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