There were also outstanding $107,000,000 of temporary loan certificates. These, being payable after ten days’ notice, were treated as greenbacks by the banks, and counted as part of their lawful money reserve, while the remainder circulated as currency, and so practically increased the volume of paper money. At the same time the new National Bank law had put in circulation $170,000,000 of National Bank notes; and more than $70,000,000 of State Bank notes were still circulating. The last named were, however, soon taxed out of existence by Congress. The grand total of the issues enumerated was ten hundred and sixty-seven millions of paper money in circulation. Nor was this all, for there were then outstanding $85,000,000 of one-year certificates of indebtedness; and the $830,000,000 of 7-30 notes, called 7-30s, outstanding were extensively used as money, and so tended to increase the inflation of the currency and prices. It will be seen therefore that the inflation of the currency was really much larger than it appeared to be by the Public Debt statements at that time. But so rapid was the contraction during the eight years following, through the maturity and cancellation of interest-bearing notes and certificates, that it is safe to say we had from sixty to seventy-five per cent. less paper, used as money, in circulation when the panic of 1873 commenced than we had in September, 1865, and to this enormous contraction of our medium of exchange that disastrous panic, the worst this country ever had, was largely due. It was, I repeat, the worst in its effects that this country ever experienced, not excepting the panics of 1837 and 1857, and was aggravated by the Franco-German War, that practically shut American securities out of the European markets, which had previously taken them freely. This was a severe blow to the American bankers who had undertaken to finance the railways then in process of construction in different parts of the country, and who had relied upon finding both home and foreign markets for the sale of the bonds issued against the completed mileage of these railways, and it led to much embarrassment and a number of failures. The depression following this panic of 1873—in which Jay Cooke & Co. failed owing to their having undertaken to finance the Northern Pacific—was prolonged, and prosperity did not really return to us as a Nation till after the resumption of specie payments in 1879. Meanwhile, nearly all the uncompleted railways in the country had been reorganized through foreclosures that wiped out hundreds of millions.