28 DEVELOPMENT again booming, prices soared upwards more than ever, fortunes were swiftly made by speculation and by promotions. In four-and-a-half years from the middle of 1870 until 1874, 857 new companies were founded, with a capital of £1,653 millions as against only 295 companies with £1,202 millions sterling in 19! years from 1851 to 1870. A process of liquidation and winding-up of banks and companies, however, set in after 1873, to be followed by a long period of hesitation and probation, in which everybody seems to have given close attention to serious work, and in which the greatest efforts were made to improve and perfect the whole economic system. The introduction of a uniform currency based on gold, as well as the introduction of uniform weights and measures, and the establishment of the Reichsbank as central institution and principal note-issuing bank, which gradually spread its net of branches and agencies all over the country, thus getting into contact with the whole commercial and industrial community, were important progressive measures. At the end of the seventh decade, the expropriation ­ of the railways, which were joint stock undertakings, by the Government, chiefly on strategical, but also on fiscal grounds, brought about a far extending dislocation of capital, since