_Hard times._—Succeeding such a crisis must follow hard times. Wage earners generally are without employment; manufactories have put out their fires; the warehouses full of goods are under attachment; farm produce is moved very slowly to market; fancy stock of horses, cattle and sheep are unsalable; farm mortgages are foreclosed as rapidly as the laws allow; skilled workmen meet absolute necessities by half time, and common laborers move from place to place in useless search for employment, their families being barely kept alive by charity. The fact that warehouses and granaries are full leads to the assumption that over-production has destroyed the market and the demand for labor. This is quite probably true of all articles of such a nature as to be held for speculative purposes. The staple grains and fancy live stock are illustrations of these. An universal over-production, so long as the articles produced are adapted to current wants, is impossible, since every man’s product, if needed, is his means of securing another man’s product to meet his own wants. On the other hand, the suffering of multitudes and the abstinence of everybody lead to the supposition that under-consumption, or failure to use what we might, is a principal cause. It is undoubtedly true that fear of absolute want checks consumption of articles within our reach. This is shown by the immediate increase of consumption as soon as the fear subsides. This, however, is a symptom of the times, rather than a cause. Some theorists account for the suffering by the ratio of the currency to the population, claiming that a larger circulation of money will fill the empty pockets of the needy, forgetting that money circulates only through the very channels of trade which something else has stopped. It is quite true that any financial legislation involving uncertain results contributes materially to the doubt which stops the machinery. All efforts to make money worth less by legislation have invariably extended the period of hard times. Almost every conceivable cause has been assigned, or given as a partial explanation, for the stagnation of trade. A careful analysis of these recurring periods in the history of our country in 1837, 1848, 1857, 1873, 1887 and 1893, shows many partial causes of disaster in exchange, affecting the peculiar nature of each panic, yet one especial cause is evident in them all. That cause is large investment in fixed capital from which no immediate returns can be expected.