It would be highly desirable to test our general conclusions by means of direct information regarding profits made in various branches of trade, but the data available for such a purpose are very meager. What scraps of information are available, however, support the view that profits were uncommonly large. Mr. David A. Wells, for example, in his reports as special commissioner of the revenue, has stories of "most anomalous and extraordinary" profits that were realized in the paper, woolen, pig-iron, and salt industries. A more general indication of the profitableness of business is afforded by the remark in the annual circular of Dun's Mercantile Agency for 1864, that "it is generally conceded that the average profits on trade range from 12 to 15 per cent." But the most important piece of evidence is found in the statistics of failures compiled by the same agency. The following table shows Dun's report of the number of bankruptcies and the amount of liabilities in the loyal States from the panic year 1857 to the end of the war: _Year_ _Number_ _Liabilities_ 1857 4,257 $265,500,000 1858 3,113 73,600,000 1859 2,959 51,300,000 1860 2,733 61,700,000 1861 5,935 $178,600,000 1862 1,652 23,000,000 1863 495 7,900,000 1864 510 8,600,000 1865 500 17,600,000 The very great decrease both in the number and the liabilities of firms that failed is the best proof that almost all business enterprises were "making money." From one point of view the small number of failures is surprising. An unstable currency is generally held to make business unsafe, and seldom has the standard money of a mercantile community proven so unstable, undergone such violent fluctuations in so short a time, as in the United States during the Civil War. Yet, instead of being extremely hazardous, business seems from the statistics of failures to have been more than usually safe.