What happened at that meeting we can only surmise. I mention it to show the connection between the National Bank Presidents and Grover Cleveland. The next morning, April 24, Jordan was at his desk. One of the first things he did was to notify the National Bank Presidents and officers of trusts and other companies to meet him that day at the Sub-Treasury. This also was a dark-lantern meeting, and no one would give out the proceedings. But what followed shortly afterward, and the action taken by those who attended that meeting, justifies the belief that that convention was called for the purpose of arranging a concerted attack upon the national industries, agriculture, commerce, property and social order of the American people—the assault to be directed by the New York National Bank Presidents—as the swiftest and surest means of forcing Congress to repeal the silver law—to give the country Cleveland’s “Object-Lesson.” Nine National Bank Presidents met John G. Carlisle at the Williams House on April 27, presumably to complete the arrangements for the attack. No doubt Cleveland had approved the conclusions reached on the 24th, and sent Carlisle to sanction them. Carlisle’s meeting with the Bank Presidents that day was, as you know, a subject of much newspaper comment. The meeting was said to have been one of “effusive cordiality,” and, in view of the events which quickly followed, there is little doubt but what it partook of the nature of “two hearts that beat as one.” It was there that the National Bankers proposed an issue of bonds. But Carlisle, like a young girl, although keen to marry, intimated that it was “too sudden.” This was the last of the series of meetings between the Government officials and the National Bank Presidents preceding the panic. Everything was now ready to give the country the “Object-Lesson.” Within the next forty-eight hours the worst financial calamity that ever befell the people was to break upon them. At this time there was nothing in the industrial situation to precipitate a panic. Prices had been low for several years, and there was none of the spirit of speculation which usually precedes a panic. Cleveland himself volunteered to say: “Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions relating to our natural resources, nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side.” Thus the people and all those engaged in industrial and productive enterprises are exonerated. Who are the guilty persons? The men who did just what that Panic Bulletin describes.