xil

Introduction

out a well-defined wash-sale conspiracy and false circulation
 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 speculators,
 large and small, who had engaged in the twoyear
 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. Coolidge,
 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 administration,
 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 disasters
 under which the American people are
suffering?”
Doubtless there is some truth in almost all of
these allocations of responsibility for the panic. But