5. Bankers sometimes do these things unnecessarily, for the purpose of making a “bear market”; but it is also true that business conditions sometimes compel them to do so, as was the case in 1857 and 1873. 6. If the banks had on hand as much money as they reported (which is not always true), they, in 1888, owed $6.01 for every dollar they reported; and last year the proportion was $9.98 to $1. The sixty-two national banks in the central reserve cities are required to keep nearly 25 per cent. of their deposits on hand in cash; the 285 in the other reserve cities only 12½ per cent., and the 5,065 in non-reserve cities only 6 per cent. State bank requirements vary greatly, private banks and loan and trust companies are under few or no restrictions, and the loan and trust companies keep only about 2 per cent. 7. Less than one-tenth of the “deposits” in banks are real money—the others being mere promises of the banks to pay money to those who have bought (with notes) the right to draw checks against them—and it is simply impossible to so regulate the system as to prevent it from frequently working disastrously. 8. Contracting the volume of any kind of money that is willingly accepted by producers always causes suffering. Indeed, modern conditions require a large annual increase in the volume of money; and, with an insufficient supply of real money, it is not now possible to prevent the use of hocus pocus money. 9. It is well known that, when their interests seem to require it, great bankers defy the laws made to restrain them. 10. There ought to be places in which people can deposit money and know it will remain there until checked out by themselves. For ten years I have called attention to the fact that there never has been, in this or any other country, a widespread commercial panic that was not caused _solely_ by the sudden contraction of the hocus pocus money then being used by banks, and have challenged contradiction; but this challenge has never been accepted. Hocus pocus money _is the one and only seriously disturbing factor that has always and everywhere preceded_ these catastrophes. Other causes aggravate them, but, with it eliminated, panics would be impossible, because it is this sudden, absolute destruction of the bank’s manufactured “liquid capital,” used by so many as their medium of exchange, which paralyzes their business operations and makes “the bottom drop out of the market,” as it were.