Vast industrial, commercial, and credit expansions lie somewhere ahead, and somewhere ahead excesses and indiscretions the world over must play their part and exact their penalties. We should cease to be surprised at these vicissitudes, for, “paradoxical as it may seem, the riches of nations can be measured by the violence of the crises which they experience.”[60] Moreover, panics are rarely such unmitigated calamities as they are pictured by those who experience them. At least they serve to place automatic checks upon extravagance and inflation, restoring prices to proper levels and chastening the spirit of over-optimism. In a world of swift changes they are soon forgotten. We may seem to be prepared for these periodic set-backs, and there may be men amongst us of sober reflection who are really wise enough to foresee the top to a normal movement, yet the accidents that have happened will happen again,--bad harvests, war, sudden failures, earthquakes,--these are not easily discerned in advance. Sanguine and ardent merchants will make the same old mistakes; good times will engender the same old hallucinations; people who see, or think they see, wealth being created all around them, will always rush in and buy at the top; there will be too much work for the dollar to do--and after that the deluge. Finally, in order that we may not become pessimists, let us remember the words of the greatest of American philosophers: “The changes that break up at short intervals the prosperity of man are but advertisements of a nature whose law is growth.” Another phenomenon quite as curious as that of panics, and one that is similarly psychological, is the unhesitating, slam-bang zeal with which we place the responsibility for these misfortunes on the shoulders of others. We, as a people, have brought the disaster upon ourselves by reason of our indiscretions. We have lost our heads and entangled ourselves in a mesh of follies. But we do not admit such reproaches, even in our communings with self. Not at all. The fault lies elsewhere, and it is balm to our bruises to place it elsewhere with indignant energy. It will not do to preach at such times about currency systems, laws of supply and demand and kindred generalities, for these are abstract and vague to a mind inflamed by losses. What such a man wants is a head to hit; something concrete, a target for his exploding wrath. And he never hesitates. He says Wall Street did it. His fathers said the same thing, and his children will follow suit.