Remedies and Preventives of Panic 245 
The contention is that during the 1929 break the 
governing authorities of the Exchange might have 
come to its rescue in order to save the market from 
a price level which was universally admitted to be 
far below any reasonable estimate of the worth of 
stocks traded. It has been said that the same scheme 
was partly balked in 1914 by a ‘“‘gutter” market 
which spontaneously sprang up. This showed that 
it was impossible to keep traders from each other 
very long against their will. There is a big differ- 
ence between a long and a short period; the essence 
of the scheme in 1929 was of a moratorium—to 
extend enough but not too long the time for getting 
buyers. That is, the virtue of the idea was not to fix 
the minimum price, so much as thereby to give rea- 
sonable time for a natural price to appear in place of 
the artificially low price of suddenly forced sales. 
Auctioneers have a minimum price on each article 
offered at auction for any one day. Foreclosures on 
mortgages require time, and ample notice given 
through advertisement in order to gather buyers to 
the scene of the foreclosure, from whom a natural 
competition is to be expected to produce a reasonable 
price for the foreclosed property. The stock ex- 
change is the only place of public sale where the 
forced selling of property is made instantaneous—to 
the great detriment, during panic, of transfers by 
any proper estimate of the value of stocks. It is not 
always a practicable requirement. Every action 
requires time. 
There are records that the London and Conti-