The Principles of Economics Part 33

The term financial panic is frequently used as a synonym for financial crisis. A crisis in the narrower sense has to do with prices--is always connected with money in some way. While, therefore, crises may be divided into industrial, speculative, and financial, according to their immediate occasion, all of them are financial in the sense that they have to do with a change in the general price level. A crisis is a jolt to prices which shatters the credit of some banks, brokers, merchants, and manufacturers. Crises are thus peculiar to the money economy and to a developed industry. Not every business misfortune is to be called an industrial crisis, but only those where prices and credit are generally depressed. A long period of hard times is sometimes called a crisis, but it is better to distinguish it by the term industrial depression.

[Sidenote: Industrial conditions preceding a crisis]

3. _The period leading up to a crisis is one of general prosperity._ Industry in successive decades does not pa.s.s through an unvarying series of changes, but history repeats itself with sufficient regularity to justify the view that a certain series of changes is typical in modern industry. When prices are at the lowest point many factories are closed, and much labor is unemployed. Conditions are worse in some industries than in others. General economy and great caution prevail; few new enterprises are undertaken. To those having available money this is a good time to buy, and property begins to change hands. Then h.o.a.rded money begins to come out of its hiding-places. Money flows in from other countries, particularly if business conditions are better abroad than here, for low prices make a country a good place in which to buy. At the same time that the money in circulation thus increases, there is a general return of confidence that increases credit. Not only are there more dollars, but each does more work. Then old enterprises are resumed and new ones are undertaken. The purchase of materials in larger quant.i.ties causes a rise in prices and an increase in costs. The surplus labor on the margin of efficiency gets employment, and wages begin to increase. The only cla.s.ses not sharing in this improvement are the receivers of fixed incomes. As prices rise, the purchasing power of their incomes gradually falls.

[Sidenote: The crisis and its results]

4. _The crisis is a moment of widespread loss, which is followed by a long period of small profits to most enterprises, and of enforced economy._ As prices cease to go up rapidly, the question arises in many minds whether the movement can continue, and if not, when it will cease.

Men wish to hold on for the last profits, and are willing to risk something to gain them. When foreign prices do not rise in as great proportion as domestic prices, foreign imports are stimulated and the quant.i.ty of exports falls. This disturbs the equilibrium of money and requires at length large and continued exportation of specie. This checks prices, and, reducing the specie reserves of the banks, compels them to be more cautious. The fall in the value of many stocks and securities held by the banks forces many brokers and speculators to convert their resources into ready money. This is the moment of danger; weak enterprises find their foundations crumbling, and there are many failures. The falling prices, the shattered credit, and the financial losses force many factories to close; many workmen are thrown out of employment, and business must again enter upon a period of retrenchment, for it has completed the cycle of changing prices.

-- II. CRISES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: No financial crises in the Middle Ages]

1. _The periods of industrial hardship in the Middle Ages were connected with adverse conditions of production, not with the collapse of prices._ Periods of exceptional hardship in medieval times were mostly due to political oppression, famine, wars, pestilence, and scourges of nature.

There being very little of the money economy, there was no development of credit and of credit prices. The money economy began, as has been noted, in the cities. As the use of money spread, as larger commercial enterprises were undertaken, as borrowing and the payment of interest became common, there began to appear in city trading circles, on a small scale, the phenomena of the modern crisis.

[Sidenote: European crises of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries]

2. _In Europe general industrial crises date from 1763 and have occurred at more or less regular intervals since._ It frequently is said that the cycle, or period, of crises is ten years, but it takes an elastic imagination to find support for this in history. The crises of the eighteenth century occurred in 1763, 1783, 1793, these dates marking the close of wars of some magnitude. The crises were not widespread or general, but were more marked in England, which was most developed industrially and in its money economy. Likewise in the nineteenth century, the crises were of unequal force in the various countries, usually being severer in England. The English crises may be roughly dated 1803, 1825, 1838, 1847, 1857, 1864, 1875, 1890. These were attributed to various causes; that of 1825 to over-trading abroad; that of 1847 to railroad-building; that of 1864 to the interruption of the cotton trade and of commerce, as a result of the Civil War in America.

While in many parts of England the crisis of 1864 was unusually severe, in other countries it was of little moment. Germany, after several years of great speculative prosperity, had a most severe crisis in 1875; while France (a somewhat significant fact), although prostrated by the war of 1870-71, losing a large amount of wealth, and paying a thousand millions of dollars to Germany as a war indemnity, escaped a commercial crisis almost entirely at that time.

[Sidenote: Crises in the United States]

3. _In the United States there have been five marked crises: the first in 1817, the last in 1893._ These crises were of date 1817-20, 1837-39, 1857, 1873, 1893. Major crises thus occurred about twenty years apart, and minor crises in several instances alternated with them, notably in 1866, 1884, and we might add, 1903. These crises were the culmination of different kinds of speculation, usually spoken of as their causes. The crisis of 1817 was due to over-trading and to the immense importation following the war of 1812 and the resumption of commerce with Europe in 1816. In 1837-39 came in quick succession two crises, not quite distinct from each other, the second similar to the relapse of a fever patient.

The immediate occasions were over-speculation in lands, a great issue of bank money, national expansion, and over-confidence, possibly in some degree the heedless financial measures of Andrew Jackson. The crisis of 1857 followed a period of great prosperity marked by the discovery of gold in California in 1848, by great expansion of commerce, by the building of railroads, and by a great increase in foreign trade. The crisis of 1873, probably the severest in our history, is attributable to great speculation, especially to railroad-building on an unexampled scale following the war. The blow, when it fell, was intensified by the contraction of currency leading to the return to a specie basis and lower prices. The crisis of 1884, a comparatively slight one, occasioned (rather than caused) by the discussion of the money question, was followed by some years of noticeable depression. The years 1889 to 1892 witnessed a prosperity that culminated in a crisis in September, 1893, (likewise generally explained as due to the unsettled state of our monetary system) followed by a period of depression lasting until 1897.

The period from 1897 to 1903 has been marked by great prosperity and by rising prices. The over-hasty prophecies of collapse in the last two years have thus far been falsified,[3] but there is now a general feeling of distrust in investing circles. Already there has been a reduction of dividends in leading industries, and here and there a fall in the value of stocks. High prices have greatly checked building. The great credit advances made on "industrials," the stocks of manufacturing corporations, are one of the main sources of danger. Caution, however, has been learned by experience; the banking interests are more closely coordinated and give better mutual support than in the past, and a considerable decline in stocks has already occurred without as yet affecting general prices of commodities. Various novel features in the situation make prophecy difficult, but a period of liquidation and lower prices appears to be at hand.

[Footnote 3: These statements are retained as they were made in March, 1903. In the following September occurred a very remarkable panic in stocks which had the minimum of effect on general business. While stock prices have somewhat recovered since that time, general business conditions, on the whole, tended for a while toward the worse until the spring of 1904.]

[Sidenote: General features of crises]

4. _Irregular in time, and unlike in their immediate occasions, crises show some general features._ The chief of these are told in the brief story of the course of prices. Crises are less severe in countries with less developed money and credit systems. They are harder in the United States and England than in Germany, harder in Germany than in France, harder in western Europe than in eastern Europe, harder in Christendom than in heathendom. They are less severe in rural districts, where prosperity depends more on crop conditions, and business has in it less of financial speculation. Their effects are least felt in the staple industries, for when hard times come, people economize on the less essential things. The glove-factory, the silk-factory, the golf-club-factory are more likely to close than the flouring-mill. They are felt less by cla.s.ses with fixed incomes than by those with variable ones. They affect wages and salaries less than profits. The rate of wages is affected only in a moderate degree, but laborers suffer in the loss of employment. The money-lender who has eliminated chance as far as possible and has taken a low rate of interest loses little; the risk-taker who draws his income from dividends on stock probably loses much.

-- III. VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS OF CRISES

[Sidenote: Glut theories of crises]

1. _Over-production and under-consumption theories are those most widely held._ In the first annual report of the United States Commissioner of Labor (1886) is given a long list of theories, more or less wild, that have been advanced in explanation of crises. It is simply a catalogue, not a logical grouping. Most of the views can be cla.s.sed as under-consumption or over-production theories, which are but two aspects of the same idea. One view is that too many things are produced, another that too few are consumed. The over-production theorist, seeing that warehouses are filled with goods that cannot be disposed of for what they cost, that factories are shut down and men are out of employment for lack of demand, declares that productive power has grown too great.

The under-consumption theorist, seeing the same facts, says that the trouble is lack of purchasing power. He admits that there are people who would like to buy these things, but he a.s.serts that such people lack money because production grows faster than wages, wages being fixed, as he believes, by the minimum of subsistence--a theory akin to the iron law of wages. In both over-production and under-consumption theories the inequality of demand and supply is looked upon as a general one. There is supposed to be not merely an unequal and mistaken distribution of production, but a general excess of productive power.

[Sidenote: Defects of glut theories]

The wide vogue held by these views would justify a fuller discussion and disproof of them here, did s.p.a.ce permit. It must suffice to indicate merely that they have the same taint of illogicalness as the "fallacy of waste," the "fallacy of saving" and, still closer likeness, the "fallacy of luxury." They overlook the fact that an income, either of money or of other goods, coming even to the wealthiest, will be used in some way. It may be used either for immediate consumption or for further indirect use in durable form. Through miscalculation there may be, at a given moment, too many consumption goods of a particular kind, but the durable applications can find no limit until the inconceivable day when the material world is no longer capable of improvement. At the time of a crisis, there is unquestionably a bad apportionment of productive agents, and a still worse adjustment of their valuations, but these in no wise negative the basic economic fact of the scarcity of wealth.

[Sidenote: Money theories of crises]

2. _Another group of theories explains the crises as being due to money, either too much or too little._ The unregulated issue of bank-notes has been a.s.signed as the cause of crises, especially under the circ.u.mstances accompanying such crises as those of 1837 and 1857 in America, when bank-note issues chanced to be the agency most marked in the undue and unsound expansion of credit. The issue of government paper money, leading to inflation and speculation, is a.s.signed as a cause leading up to such a crisis as that of 1873, following our Civil War. The reverse view is taken by the advocates of a cheap and plentiful money. They say that these crises were caused, not by the expansion, but by the reduction of bank-notes; for example, not by the inflation of prices through the issue of greenbacks in 1862 to 1865, but by the contraction of the currency from 1866 to 1873.

[Sidenote: Their inadequacy]

There is only a fragment of truth in these various views. It is always lack of money at the moment of the crisis that causes any particular failure, and in that sense it is always lack of money that causes a crisis. But the question is, whether in any reasonable sense it can be said that it was lack of a circulating medium before the crisis that brought it on. There is no support for this view, except in the rare case when the money standard is undergoing a rapid change, as in the United States from 1866 to 1873, and the statement then needs much modification and explanation. The money theories of crises are nearer to the truth than are the over-production type, for the crisis is always connected with money and prices. But it cannot be said that the absolute amount of money in circulation in the period preceding crises gives occasion to them. In a few instances a rapid change in the amount has had an important effect, but this fact does not explain crises in general.

Lack of confidence is said to be a cause of crises. This is a truism, but the lack of confidence is not without reason and cause.

Over-confidence in the period of expanding prices is succeeded by extreme depression when many false hopes are shattered.

[Sidenote: Capitalization theory of crises]

3. _Crises must be explained essentially as the forcible and sudden movement of readjustment in the mistaken capitalization of productive agents._ Capitalization runs through all industry. The value of everything that lasts for more than a moment is built in part upon rents that are not actual, but expectative, whose amount, therefore, is a matter of guesswork, or "speculation." Many unknown factors enter into the estimate of future rents. The universal tendency to rhythm in motion (material or psychic) manifests itself in an overestimate or underestimate of rent and of every other factor in value. This is emphasized by a psychological factor called the "hypnotism of the crowd," Most men follow a leader in investment as in other things. The spirit of speculation grows till it becomes almost a frenzy, and people rush toward this or that investment, throwing capitalization in some industries far out of equilibrium with that in others.

The use of credit enhances the rhythm of price. A large part of business is done practically on margins. If the value of a thing fully paid for falls in the hands of the owner, he alone loses; but if the value of a thing only partly paid for falls so much that the owner is forced to default in his payment, the loss may be transmitted along the line of credit to every one in the series of transactions. A credit system, highly developed, is a house of cards at a time of financial stress.

There is an element of credit in all modern business. Enterprisers enter into strenuous rivalry to secure the profits of a rise, ever hoping to get out whole before the crisis comes.

[Sidenote: Psychological nature and objective conditions of crises]

The fundamental cause of crises thus is seen to be psychological; it is the rhythmic miscalculation of rents and of capital value, occurring to some degree throughout industry, but particularly in certain lines. But this subjective cause in men is given full opportunity for action only when certain favoring objective conditions are present. Most noteworthy of these besides the credit system is a dynamic condition of industry.

The past century has opened up new fields for investment on an unexampled scale. Investment has advanced both intensively and extensively in a series of great waves. New machinery and processes have given undreamed of opportunities for enterprise in the older countries, and the physical frontier of investment has moved outward with the march of millions of immigrants to people the fertile wilderness. Such factors disturb the equilibrium of prices both in time and s.p.a.ce, give a powerful impulse toward higher values in the older lands, and stimulate the hopes of all investors. When the balance between the capitalizations of various industries and between the rents of the various periods proves to be false, the inevitable readjustment causes suffering and loss to many, but particularly in the inflated industries. But, because of the mutual relations of men in business, few even of those who have kept freest from speculation can quite escape the evils.

[Sidenote: Widespread effects on incomes]

4. _Crises must be discussed in connection with other subjects than profits._ In the text-books the subject of the crisis is variously cla.s.sified. It may well be discussed with money, credit, and banking. It has its bearings on wages, justice in distribution, the theory of interest, and the consumption of wealth. But the reasons for taking it up in connection with the subject of profits are strongest. In no other connection is the presence of the element of speculation and of chance profit and loss in business so forcibly seen.

[Sidenote: Their probable mitigation]

The income of every cla.s.s of society is to some extent affected by these more or less periodic fluctuations. They are in part the price paid for progress under the constantly shifting conditions of our dynamic industry. In part they are the proof of industrial maladjustment. The force of the shocks will no doubt be much reduced by better banking and business methods, and by a sound currency system. More important still, the development of moderation, conservatism, and a less speculative spirit among the leaders of business will do much toward softening the asperity of these scourges of industry.

PART III

THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF VALUE

DIVISION A--RELATION OF PRIVATE INCOME TO SOCIAL WELFARE

CHAPTER 38

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND INHERITANCE