facility and economy, at those points the inherent centripetal and centrifrugal forces will strengthen. Everything will have its distinctive headquarters, and there will be concentrated the supremest excellence, adaptation, and economy.

ACTION AND REACTION, OR "BOOMS"

AND PANICS.

Extremes in man concur to general use."

POPE.

"After a storm comes a calm."

"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy

change."

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

EURIPIDES.

JULIUS CESAR, Act IV.

"The time is out of joint."

HAMLET, Act I.

"One extreme follows the other."

"Every white will have its black,
And every sweet its sour."

SIR CARLINE.

"In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it."

EPICTETUS.

"Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. The changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth."

EMERSON.

XVII.

ACTION AND REACTION, OR "BOOMS" AND PANICS.

POLARITY is not only an economic but a universal law. Wherever we turn in the broad domain of nature, there are the positive and negative, heat and cold, ebb and flow, general undulation. Excess leads to deficiency, and deficiency to excess. Things that are the most precious, when abused become the most obnoxious. Vibration is continuous both within and outside of human nature. The floods of springtime are followed by the droughts of summer. After activity comes rest; after elevation, depression; after light, darkness.

If we soar above the normal business level at one time, we will certainly fall below it at another; and the higher the flight the greater and more rapid the fall. The most severe panics are generally preceded by intense activity and speculation. The clouds may be slow in gathering, but when they break, like a thunder-storm, they clear the atmosphere.

Every one is aware of alternations of what are popularly known as "good times" and "hard times." But many overlook the fact that they are governed by fixed laws, and regard them as matters of chance, or, at least, as the result of some political or monetary circumstance which has but little to do with their advent.

A panic is a fright or loss of confidence in the stability of existing conditions. There are gradual panics, though the term is more exclusively applied to those which are sudden and unexpected. The antecedents of a depression may

be vital and adequate, or possibly exist only in the fancy or supposition of disaster. An alarm of fire in a public gathering may cause a stampede, even if it have no basis of fact. The panic is in the people. But financial alarm is usually the result of causes which give a reasonable ground for apprehension.

Until human nature is evolved to a higher plane there will be flood and ebb tides in the turbulent sea of finance. This would still be true under the most ideal political and monetary system that can be imagined. The feverish desire to get much for little, to gain profit by a short-cut, especially where there are easy facilities for credit and speculation, always leads directly to overtrading which is the sure precursor of shrinkage and disaster. The modern facilities for making large transactions by the deposit of small sums called "margins" furnish a powerful enticement for unhealthful expansion. Artificial attempts to "bear" or "bull" the market lead many into financial deeps until they are submerged. People are never quite prepared for the arrival of a panic, and to many it comes like "a thief in the night."

Overtrading may take place in real estate, stocks, wheat, or tulips. Commodities are only the tools or instruments which are made use of to gratify the desire for rapid and abnormal gain. It is not legitimate industry and commerce, but unhealthful speculation, that brings disaster.

The fundamental and primary condition which results in panic may be expressed in one word, debt. In itself, debt is not necessarily an evil, but its abuse leads to disaster. An experience of profit leads to larger ventures, and these being successful to still larger, until both individual and collective indebtedness grow to great proportions. When the crisis comes, all want what is due to them, and but few are able to respond. Money becomes scarce and abnormally valuable, and productions unsalable, except at great sacri