I am of the opinion that, judged by his public utterances, especially his October speech at Nashville, Tenn., the President had not the remotest idea that such an awful shock as the panic of 1907 was imminent. He was not a student of economic conditions; he had no familiarity with crisis-producing phenomena; he had never seen a panic at close quarters. His speeches did not cause the panic, for that disturbance was foreordained; they served, however, to hasten it, to intensify it, and to keep it alive. Perhaps I may add that the sparks beaten by him from the anvil of political expediency at that unfortunate moment threw more light upon the President himself than upon the evils he condemned. Perhaps, too, that was what the President most desired. In any case, the fact remains that just as there is too much confidence in times of excessive expansion, so there is too little in times of unreasoning depression; and that the President’s attitude aggravated the latter situations is undeniable. But by what stretch of the imagination can the Stock Exchange be credited with playing any part in this third cause of the panic? If temporary depression results from exposure of wrongdoing among railroad, industrial, or financial institutions, nowhere in the land is execration poured forth upon the evil-doers more vigorously than within its four walls. Far from complaining, the Stock Exchange and the whole investment community welcome such exposures, despite their effect on the market, for the precise reason that their own protection and benefit, if nothing else, is promoted by it. There was yet another reason for the panic, closely related to the attitude of the President. I refer to the predicament of the railways of the country as 1906 passed into 1907. Staggering under a load of traffic which sorely taxed their equipment, the managers of these properties cried aloud to the investing public for funds. But capital was not to be had. Tied up in real-estate speculation and in quarters whence it could not be easily recovered, the normal supply of capital was immobile and inert. What was worse, encouraged by the attitude of the President, an epidemic of radical anti-railroad legislation became manifest in the several States, new and onerous burdens of taxation were imposed, and a wave of distrust and suspicion regarding railway investments was created. Simultaneously the cost of wages and materials advanced--both characteristic phenomena indicating trouble--and, as a consequence of all this blockade, the ratio of net to gross in the matter of increased earnings fell from the normal proportion of about 40 per cent. in the first nine months of 1906, to less than 10 per cent. in the same months of 1907.