Whether we shall ever succeed in adopting it, or something like it, in America, is the burning question in our banking offices to-day. Until something is done, the layman who distrusts the plan of a central bank and looks upon Wall Street with abhorrence, may find satisfaction in knowing that the average New York banker is the most worried and harassed man in American business life. With millions of other people’s money in his possession subject to withdrawal by check at sight, and with millions of the best security in the world in his vaults lying absolutely idle and worthless so far as raising currency is concerned, he stands between the devil and the deep-blue sea. Anything that frightens his depositors, or even remotely suggests panic, gives him a cold chill. People who talk of manipulation by New York bankers as a cause of the panic of 1907 or any other panic are blind to the fact that any disturbance of normal conditions is the one thing that bankers would avoid as they would avoid the plague. There was a third cause of the panic in the course pursued by the President. In some quarters it is still termed “the Roosevelt panic,” and there exists a belief that the President by his actions and speeches played a large part in bringing about the crisis. Personally, I feel that this has been exaggerated. There had been, unquestionably, wrongdoing by certain corporation managers. The President, with a characteristic vigor not unknown to politicians, seized upon it as a theme for his speeches, and the “evils,” the “malefactors,” the “corruption” and “dishonesty” with which he bruised the air, raised a suspicion in many quarters as to the status and security of the whole financial situation and undoubtedly contributed to the frightened liquidation of the day. The impression these utterances produced abroad, where American securities were popular, was painful, and led one returning tourist to remark that Europe was acquiring the idea that we were “a nation of swindlers.” All panics are largely psychological, and this was no exception. The President’s public speeches came at a time when emotion, apprehension, and alarm filled men’s minds; and at a time when those irrational moods were most likely to exaggerate the difficulties that existed, and to conjure up difficulties that did not exist. Panics _seem_ to come from lack of money, the real difficulty is lack of confidence, and it was to this that the President’s course directly contributed.