The following extracts from published statements and opinions are more general in their nature, but not less instructive:
1870. The inquiry has been sufficiently broad to enable them (the committee), to point out with a considerable degree of accuracy the causes which have immediately operated to produce the present depression in the commerce of the country, and in some branches of its manufacturing and mining industries. These causes are quite beyond legislative control in this country.—Report of Select Committee of the House of Commons, Dominion of Canada, 1876.
1877. Hard times! For four years this sober pass-word has gained in gravity of import. For a time it was panic; but suppositions of speedy recovery have given place to a conviction of underlying facts that these hard times are more than a panic; that the existing depression of trade and dearth of employment are not, in popular apprehension, exaggerated, but are the serious results of causes more permanent in their nature than is generally considered.—Hard Times, by Franklin W. Smith, Boston, 1877, James R. Osgood & Co.Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, June 17, 1878.
Whereas, labor and the productive interests of the country are greatly depressed, and suffering severely from causes not yet fully understood, etc.: Therefore,
Resolved, That a committee of seven members of this House be appointed, whose duty it shall be to inquire into and ascertain the causes of general business depression, etc., and report at the next session.
1878. Commercial depression is the universal cry—a commercial depression probably unprecedented in duration in the annals of trade, except under the disturbing action of prolonged war. . . . Ample evidence abounds on all sides to show its extent and severity in England. Have other countries bowed their heads in suffering under the commercial depression? Let America be the first to speak. In 1873 she experienced a shock of the most formidable kind. She has not recovered from the shock at this very hour. Let us visit Germany—Germany the conqueror in a great war, and the exactor of an unheard-of indemnity. What do we find in that country? Worse commercial weather at this hour than in any other. Nowhere are louder complaints uttered of the stagnation of trade. Austria and Hungary repeat the cry, but in a somewhat lower voice. And so we come round to France, the people whose well-being has been so visited with the most violent assaults. Her losses and sufferings have surpassed those endured by any other nation. Yet the deep, heavy pressure of her commercial paralysis has weighed upon her the least oppressive of all. Such a depression, spread over so many countries, inflicting such continuous distress, and lasting for so long a period of time, the history of trade has probably never before exhibited.—Bonamy Price, Contemporary Review, 1878.
