The formation and rapid spread of the Grangers' association in the West, and its avowed design to make war upon the railway interest with a view of securing cheap transportation to the seaboard, was another disturbing element, undermining confidence in railway property. But the greatest and the immediate cause of the crisis was the over-building of railways; and hard indeed are likely to be the fortunes of the unfinished enterprises of this character arrested by its blighting influence; for capital for years to come will be very slow in finding its way into the bonds of roads to be built by the proceeds of their sale. It was a false and dangerous system--and the event has proved its unsoundness--for new companies to rely from the outset upon this source for the means of construction. It was a hand-to-mouth policy, resting upon so precarious a foundation that, in the light of experience, we can only wonder that eminent and otherwise conservative bankers should have adopted it to the extent they did, thereby not only jeopardizing their own position, but imperiling the whole financial community. About six thousand miles of new railways were constructed in the United States in 1872, of which it may be estimated that at least seven-eighths were in advance of the national requirements. Not a few of those now unfinished or just completed will, like the New York and Oswego Midland, be forced into bankruptcy, and it will be long before all the ruins left by the crisis will be cleared away. A shock has been given to the entire railway interest of the country, the full effect of which has not yet been felt; and those who expect the prices of railway securities to rule as high, for a considerable period to come, as they did before the panic, are likely to be disappointed. After all panics we have had more or less wearisome stagnation and depression, growing out of impoverishment and distrust of new ventures; and this last one will hardly prove an exception to the rule. The mercantile interest, too, will probably continue for some time to suffer in consequence of the monetary derangements resulting from it and the want of adequate banking--or rather currency--facilities for bringing forward cotton and general produce from the West and South for shipment; and here and there houses that have so far withstood the strain will break down under it. But in a rapidly growing country, with inexhaustible resources, like this, recovery from such disasters is, fortunately, far quicker than among the less progressive nations of Europe.