xil 
Introduction 
out a well-defined wash-sale conspiracy and false cir- 
culation campaign” Mr. Durant declares that the 
President paid no attention to his warning of an 
approaching crash, and blames the Federal Reserve 
Board for causing it. He says the Federal Reserve 
Board should have put down the rediscount rate to 3 
per cent, while Mr. H. Parker Willis blames the 
Reserve Board for not having drastically raised the 
rediscount rate. 
Sir George Paish says that the crash came because 
the bankers had gotten everybody into debt. The 
Investment Trusts have been blamed for “dumping” 
on the market. The New York Times praises the 
banks, but excoriates the “nation-wide army of specu- 
lators, large and small, who had engaged in the two- 
year bubble-blowing.” Mr. Babson has been blamed 
for saying that a crash would come “sooner or later.” 
Dr. John H. Gray blames Mr. Mellon, Mr. Cool- 
idge, and myself for “always insisting that all was 
well and talking of prosperity, a new era, and 
increased efficiency of production.” In this catalogue 
of wholesale and particular blamings one is reminded 
of that old panic of 1837, in Van Buren’s adminis- 
tration, when the Associated Merchants of New 
York City published a resolution asking, “On what 
constitutional or moral grounds can Martin Van 
Buren defend himself for having caused all the dis- 
asters under which the American people are 
suffering?” 
Doubtless there is some truth in almost all of 
these allocations of responsibility for the panic. But