It is understood that the largest fortunes in the country are made by magnifying this kind of property. It is known that a panic seldom strikes its fangs into the manipulator. It is believed that the public is usually the bitten party in the gambling circle. But in the present case it is not probable that any but the Wall Street men have much suffered, or that any fortunes have been made in the street. What has had to be done is to distribute through the street a large aggregate of losses incurred since 1881. The sum total exceeds five hundred millions, according to some statisticians. This sum is divided into two parts: 1st, losses from July 1881 to January 1883, estimated at three hundred millions; 2nd, losses from January 1883 to May 1884, estimated at two hundred millions. We mean losses as measured by the fall in market price of railroad paper of all kinds. It is believed that before 1883 the public at large had suffered a loss of perhaps two hundred millions, that since that the said public has had little to do with the Wall Street market, and that the street (including all the men doing business on the stock market) has had to distribute a loss of three hundred millions. It is presumed that the public has, since January 1883, recovered from its losses, but the street is in the agony of its punishment. It was inevitable that some of the losses should be thrown on the banks; and through these losses the panic directly reached the public, in the double form of impaired confidence and stringency. The country has borne both evils with good sense. The impairment of confidence did not become general distrust: the stringency, which for a day or two made money worth four or five hundred per cent. per annum, passed off in a week. The fact that the troubles concerned one kind of property only, and was localized in Wall Street, was quickly understood by the country at large. The wounded banks were relieved by their neighbors, and the brokers on whose books the bad balances are found have been left to settle up their business as they may be able to manage it, while business in general goes on as before, with, however, a considerable increase of caution. The first effect of this caution will be depressing. Nor is it to be denied that considerable depression already existed in legitimate trades. The trouble is not serious, but it is annoying. At bottom it is based on an excess of enterprise in a part of the manufacturing and trading public. Anxious to be rich, they aim at impossible growth in business. They make certain kinds of goods in larger quantities than the public will consume them. This trouble may be called over-production or under-consumption; it does not much matter. Whatever name we give it, the thing is self-corrective, and involves no large disaster. It compels men to content themselves with less than they wish, teaches us that we can not all be millionaires, cuts down our ambition for social importance or