The panic of 1884 reflected a larger average movement of prices, the losses of May 13-16 running from 8 to 15 points. The panic proper covered two days, while the recovery for ten stocks amounted to about five-eighths of the loss. Details follow:

The panic of 1893 was not very severe in the extent of the losses. The average fall in 13 stocks was 7.34 per cent. and in only a few cases did the loss exceed ten points. In the leading stocks quoted the losses were from 7 to 9 points, while the recovery was in nearly every case larger than the panic decline.

The Venezuela panic of 1895 was about equal in inten

sity to the panics of 1873 and 1884. The average of 15

stocks fell 9.72 per cent. and a considerable proportion of the losses exceeded 10 points. The recovery was normal, about two-thirds the amount of the decline.

The declines are amazing when compared with the

losses in other panics. Drops exceeded 40 points each in

Atchison, St. Paul, Rock Island, Manhattan, Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific. The figures showing the high point were in some cases a week or more before the low point, but the drop as between the close, May 8th, and the low point, May 9th, covered in most cases a large proportion of the total decline.

The recovery was equally noteworthy. Union Pacific fell 57 points and rose 472 points within one week. Missouri Pacific fell 4434 points and recovered 362 points in the same time. Other changes were almost as pronounced, going to show that in the extent of the fluctuations the panic this month was not to be named in the same breath with any panic record in the past.

It came and went so swiftly as to leave onlookers almost dazed. The speed and the extent of the recovery was all that saved the panic from being a financial catastrophe.

A long train of ills followed the smaller declines in panics past. The ills would have been a calamity had the low prices of May 9, 1901, continued for twenty-four hours.

The fluctuations of the May 9 panic show that while investment stock was not greatly disturbed and while commission houses proved to be strong enough to endure the strain without failure, the large trading which had been the feature of the market that year resulted in a rush to sell which carried prices far below what the decline would have been under normal selling pressure.

In other words, a great market represented by transactions of from two to three million shares a day, carries

with it the possibility of movements in prices as much greater than normal as is the volume of trading greater than normal. There is a relation between the volume of business and the movement of prices. Great activity means great movements whenever the normal balance between buyers and sellers is violently disturbed.

CHAPTER XXXII.

IND OF SEVERAL "BOOMS."

The 1902 autumn collapse of numerous stocks, inflated in the progress of the crazy "boom" of that season to the highest prices on record, suggested reminiscences. There are many of such reminiscences in point.

The first half of 1881 was a period much resembling the first four months of 1901. Burlington and Quincy had risen 222 points, St. Paul 28, Northwestern 23, Lake Shore, 1734, Louisville 5912, New York Central 272, Panama Railway 60, Western Union 57. This is the account of the period by a conservative reviewer of the time:

"In the present era, consolidation is the word, and nothing in the financial world has now such charms for investors and capitalists as this magic term. Let the stocks of two non-competing companies each be selling at 20, with few buyers; let a consolidation be proposed, share for share, and immediately the stocks are run up to 30-40— 50-as the case may be. Add one more element to the transaction-water-in the shape of a stock distribution of 100 per cent. or more, and the original amount of stock, selling for only 20, is found to be worth par. This illustration may present an extreme view of the case in the details mentioned, but the general fact is indisputable that a large number of stocks on roads that have never paid a