The management and control of a great public business, especially one that has long survived public criticism, is no light matter. It requires more than common industry, and more than common ability. What the Stock Exchange asks of you and of every thoughtful citizen in the land is a recognition of these matters, and a patient survey of all that enters into them. The critic in “The Vicar of Wakefield” laid it down as a good rule that you should _always_ say the picture would have been a better one if the artist had taken more time. Criticism offered in this spirit the members of the Stock Exchange can bear with good humor. What hurts them on the raw is the critic’s failure to study and investigate, or, getting back to the text of Mr. Bryce’s sermon, “the neglect to think.” CHAPTER VI PANICS, AND THE CRISIS OF 1907 A panic is a state of mind. It cannot be regulated by statute law nor preached down by press or pulpit. At such times, suspicion, apprehension, and alarm take possession; reflection and sobriety are crowded out; men do and say irrational and unreasoning things; incidents trifling in themselves are exaggerated into undue proportions; all kinds of difficulties are conjured into the imagination. The best that can be said of such a phenomenon is that it is of brief duration.[59] In Wall Street, where men are accustomed to looking forward at all times, the question is ever in mind as to the next panic. The last one left its sting; we are interested now in knowing about the future. Have we learned how to avoid these difficulties? May we hope to diminish their force and mitigate their terrors? May we rely upon the superior organization of business and the greater quantity and quality of capital to soften the effect of the next shock? I think not. We may lull ourselves into a coma of fancied security as we reflect upon experience and its expensive lessons, but we deceive ourselves if we think that we shall finally arrive at a point where these convulsions shall cease. Nothing of that sort can come about among people strong with health and vigor, confident and full of energy, and impatient for action. With such a people life is incessantly mobile; a constantly increasing volume of creative activity impels them onward. Panics are unknown in dead countries and in countries that have not yet heard the call of progress; in all other countries the violence of these shocks is directly proportionate to the enterprise of the people. The more civilization there is, the greater the creation of wealth; the more wealth there is, the greater the volume of speculation that creates wealth. In such circumstances it is idle to talk of a time when panics shall cease, because confidence and enterprise must ever push onward, speculation in material things must accompany them, supply must overtake demand, and human nature with its moods and caprices must finally pay toll.