And here is another destruction meter, absolutely infallible--the suicides. In the first six months of 1921 there were 4,527 men suicides, as against 1,810 for the same period in 1920; 1,982 women as against 961; 214 boys as against 88 and 293 girls as against 137--7,016 suicides for the first six months of 1921 as against 2,996 for the same period of 1920. The enormous increase in men suicides--over two and one-half for one--tells its own story. They came from all classes, bankers, merchants, farmers, laborers and professional men. None know how many of this enormous increase, the largest since statistics have been kept, were driven to desperation and to death from hunger, from unemployment, from the loss of life's toil or from the failure of enterprises in which they had spent their lives. No statistics can summarize human emotions, but they can tell and they do tell of the greatest holocaust of suicides ever ravaging this land--undoubtedly due to industrial tragedies staged by the cold blooded butchery of production. This much is certain. Never before in a given time in this land has there been such a holocaust of failures, of suicides and of unemployment. Never before in this land were such sacrifices laid on the twin altars of Moloch and of Mammon. And they precisely correspond in time with the Tragedy of Drastic Deflation! During all this time and particularly beginning with the late summer and early fall of 1920, individuals, associations, committees and organizations representing farmers, planters, cattlemen, manufacturers, bankers and merchants--in short, representatives of all industries--were entreating and beseeching Governor Harding of the Federal Reserve Board and his associates to be more mild and more lenient and more reasonable in their drastic tragedy of destruction. They might as well have besought a cyclone or entreated a tornado or prayed to an earthquake. Cold-bloodedly, relentlessly and wantonly loans were called, extensions were refused, renewals were tabooed and bank credit put on the chopping block. The very people whose toil and whose labor and whose real wealth were building the magnificent palaces wherein these Shylockeries were housed and were paying the exorbitant salaries of these money despots were being ruined by their servants! The Federal Reserve System at that very time had a loaning ability of over $2,000,000,000 more than it then used and not only wouldn't use it, but contracted its loans by $2,005,149,000 and currency by over $932,000,000. Instead of aiding production, it throttled it. And instead of aiding the producers of commodities to carry them it forced producers to market them at most ruinous losses! Instead of dropping the curtain on this Tragedy of Drastic Destruction, it ran it to its close! It staged the greatest debacle of blasted credit, number of failures, magnitude of liabilities, suicides and unemployment ever witnessed in this land. It did it deliberately, ruthlessly and as per