No man that lived through the Panic of ’73 can ever forget it and on me it made an indelible impression. At the root of the trouble was railway over-expansion. The successful completion of the Union Pacific in 1869 caused the projection of many other roads. Jay Cooke launched the Northern Pacific; Fisk and Hatch, the Chesapeake & Ohio; Kenyon, Cox & Co., the Canadian Southern. The eminent New York banking concerns floated the bonds; the large rate of interest promised--N. P. paid 8½ per cent.--attracted buyers, largely clergymen, school-teachers and small professional men--and prices advanced until optimism bordered on hysteria. Issue followed issue. Then, in the May of ’73, a panic on the Vienna Bourse stopped European consumption and threw back on the New York financiers obligations that strained their credit. Early in September, after one unfortunate bank-statement followed on the heels of another, call-money was at 7⅙ and commercial paper at from nine to twelve per cent. Minor failures were numerous in the week of September 8th. Kenyon, Cox &. Co. failed on the 13th; the Eclectic Life Insurance Co. on the 17th. On the 18th, the big bolt fell; word ran round that Jay Cooke & Co., in many respects the greatest house of its time, was tottering. This news greatly startled Kurzman, who had been a persistent purchaser of Northern Pacific bonds. “On the floor of the Exchange,” said the _Times_, “the brokers surged out, tumbling pell-mell over each other in the general confusion, and reached their offices in race-horse time.” Those were not the days of telephones; when the panic-stricken men had got their orders, they ran back to the floor, on which absolute confusion reigned. Men shouted themselves hoarse, contradicted themselves and collapsed. A moment was enough to ruin many a dealer. Any one with money to lend was beset by a mob of lunatics. Almost immediately the effect was felt all the way down the financial line; smaller companies went the way of the big ones and many of the smallest were tottering after the smaller. That week I took as usual all that I could spare from my scant salary and went, according to my custom, to the German Uptown Savings Bank to deposit it along with the little fund that I was laboriously setting aside. There was a big line of confident depositors bent on similar errands; many were ahead of me, and waiting my turn, as I looked into the teller’s cage, I saw the president of the bank in a very earnest conversation with three other men. Of course, I could not hear what they were saying, but I thought the president seemed worried, and that those with him also showed uneasiness.