The business of the Exchange amounted to more than 100,000 shares in the first hour and then there was a brief lull. The bears soon broke it by opening a fresh attack. It met at first the same stubborn resistance. Then it became apparent that the Broad Street syndicate was playing a more desperate game than it had planned. Its members had decided in hasty conference to stake their fortunes on a final blow. Stocks were pitched into the market in a reckless and wholesale fashion that almost matched the scenes of Blue Monday. Prices held up bravely for a few minutes and then they began to yield. Suddenly the market’s support disappeared. Western Union dropped half a dozen points in as many minutes. The wildest excitement seized the Exchange. The smaller brokers and room traders thought they saw the end of the battle and rushed in to take advantage of the bear panic. The crash had come. It was a mad scramble to sell stocks. Fractions did not count in the frantic rush to unload or sell short. The same stocks sold at two or three different prices the same moment, so great was the confusion. The roar of voices, the rushing to and fro, the struggles to get inside the groups of shouting brokers, made one of those scenes which sometimes suggest to spectators in the gallery that the New York Stock Exchange is a madhouse turned loose. Half a dozen standard stocks fell twenty points within an hour. Specialties and speculative securities were nowhere. The bottom had dropped out and there was no end in sight. The creators of the panic had no need to help it on after the break had fairly begun. The greater part of the decline took place upon a very small volume of business. One hundred and two hundred share lots carried prices down more easily than blocks of 5,000 shares had done earlier in the day. The crisis was desperate, appalling. A few of the governors of the Exchange consulted hurriedly with the chairman. It was suggested that business should be suspended for an hour to give an opportunity for reason to reassert itself. Announcements of failures began to be made, but none of them were important.