When the gong rang in the New York Stock Exchange at ten o’clock one morning just before the 1894 Christmas holidays, the attendance of brokers upon the floor was smaller than usual. The signal for beginning business was not followed by the loud roar of voices which marks the days of “good business” in Wall Street. “The public” was not there and hadn’t been there for a long time. The lambs had learned discretion months ago. Not even “the tails they left behind them” remained to wrangle over. The practice of financial cannibalism had gone on for so long in a “traders’ market” that brokers looked forward to the New Year’s balance sheets with the gloomiest forebodings. The outlook was so bad that a strong clique apparently had begun operations a few weeks before for the purpose of hastening and profiting by the crash which many believed to be inevitable. The bears seemed in a fair way to accomplish their purpose. Prices, already low, had yielded easily. The rallies had been few and insignificant. The market was already blue and even panicky at times. Nobody seemed to think, however, that the crisis was at hand. For two or three days, the best of the active stocks, New York Central, Lake Shore, Northwest, Western Union, and C. B. & Q., had been steadily hammered. They had yielded an average of two points each and were still weak. The largest groups of brokers this morning were around the poles where these stocks were dealt in. Western Union was the most active at the outset. It had closed the night before at 77¾. It was offered freely just after trading began at 77½ and then at 77⅜. There was little support, and when one of the sellers offered 1,000 shares at 77¼, there was some surprise that a little man who had hurried over from another part of the room should accept the lot and promptly bid the same price for more. He got 2,500 shares before offers ceased and then he bid an eighth and a quarter higher still, for 1,000 share lots. He had to offer 78 before he gained 5,000 shares and then no more were forthcoming. There were signs of animation around the Western Union pole by this time, and the nervous young broker bolted over to the Lake Shore and New York Central crowd. He bid up the price of each of these stocks a full point, accumulating nearly 8,000 shares by the operation. Before eleven o’clock the sudden strength of these leading securities had given a better tone to the whole market. There was heavy buying of Northwest and C. B. & Q., also, and although the bears renewed the attack an hour later their stock was taken without any yielding of prices.