Note 76 — Chapter VI · PANICS, AND THE CRISIS OF 1907
Reading edition
Senator Burton “Crises and Depressions,” pp. 51, 52, enumerates the important indicia of crisis-producing conditions as follows:
(a) An increase in prices of commodities and later of real estate.
(b) Increased activity of established enterprises and the formation of many new ones, especially those which provide for increased production and improved methods, all requiring the change of circulating to fixed capital.
(c) An active demand for loans at higher rates of interest.
(d) The general employment of labor at increasing or well-sustained wages.
(e) Increasing extravagance in private and public expenditure.
(f) The development of a mania for speculation, attended by dishonest methods in business and the gullibility of investors.
(g) A great expansion of discounts and loans and a resulting rise in the rate of interest; also a material increase in wages, attended by frequent strikes and by difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of laborers to meet the demand.
Not one of these indications of trouble was lacking in the period preceding the panic of 1907.