Causes of the Panic 
49 
is substantially true of investment trust issues— 
although the investment trusts withheld their pur- 
chases of stocks immediately before the panic, thus 
contributing to the fall in prices. 
But it is a fact, and an important one, that new 
investment trust securities had been created and 
issued more rapidly, at least, than these securities 
could be fully substituted; many were not yet listed on 
the Stock Exchange so as to become as readily nego- 
tiable as the securities they had displaced. By some 
fatality the crash seemed to be exactly so timed that 
many people with plenty of collateral could not use 
it because it consisted temporarily of investment 
trust certificates unlisted and non-liquid. That this 
factor played a part was evidenced by the fact that 
in the panic many investment trust securities which, 
a few weeks before, were selling above their liqui- 
dation value, thus capitalizing the investment trust 
management, came to sell below liquidation value; 
that is, the constituent stocks held by these invest- 
ment trusts were worth more than the titles to them 
in the form of the trust’s certificates. 
Gold Withdrawals 
Yet another point is suggested by George E. Rob- 
erts, Vice President of the National City Bank, in 
his address at the December, 1929, meeting of the 
New York Academy of Political Science. Mr. Rob- 
erts notes that the export of half a billion of gold 
during 1927 and 1928, while influencing the attitude 
of the banks, “did not command the attention it