THE FINANCIAL PANIC.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 19

THE FINANCIAL PANIC.

♦ ANOTHER CASE ©F SUICIDE. NEW YORK, December 10. The number of unemployed in Ne^r York City alone is estimated at 125,000. 1 December 11. The Electric Vehicle Company of New , Jersey has suspended payment. Its capital ! is £4,000,000. December 12. Saldeir, manager of a branch of the California Safe Deposit Trust Company, has committed suicide. The New York World mentions .that at ' several big dinners the President's health was drunk in studied and significant silence. It expresses the fear that President Roosevelt has committed mistakes in clamouring for revolutionary legislation,^ a bigger army and navy/ and making constant appeals to the jingo spirit and the popular passions and class hatred. - j The New York Sun declares that Presi- | dent Roosevelt is the most conscienceless and reckless demagogue the country has ever seen. Mr W. J. Fowler, chairman of the House of Representatives' Banking Currency Committee, speaking at Chicago, said that if the present financial policy were continued there would come a great commercial tragedy, dwarfing' all the others. ' DUNEDIN MERCHANT'S OBSERVATIONS. (Feom Ope Own Cobhespowde»t.) WELLINGTON, December 13. Mr C. Rattray, of Dunedin, returned to the colony yesterday from a trip abroad. He happened to be in -New York at the height of the financial crisis, and went to Wall street with a well-known man (Mr J. H. Davis), who married Miss Sievwright, formerly of Dunedin. The cause of the financial trouble, Mr Rattray informed me, in the course of a brief chat I had with him in the street, was the over-capitalisa-tion that bad been going on. There had in consequence been a bit of a panic, and a consequent shrinking in values, equal to about -£140,000. When Mr Rattray left America those interested did not see the end of it all, but were making desperate efforts to bolster up the position. The week after the Knickerbocker Trust closed he saw one Sunday morning, opposite one of the other trust companys, a- queue of between 30 and 40 people vraiting in the pouring rain for' the doors of the institution to open on the following Monday. They had* been waiting there since the bank closed on the previous Saturday. It was, says Mr Rattray, a pitiable sight. At that tine Morgan was the men. of the hour — i.e., so far as business men were concerned, but Roosevelt was being cursed right and left. They said he was responsible for it all. His answer is that it is better to come to grips with the position, j now than.have to lace it later on, when . the difficulties will only have increased. Morgan was loudly cheered on the Stock Exchange, which was a wonderful sight. Nearly all the stands for the different classes of stocks about which people were formerly wont to congregate, were practically deserted, and the only stand that attracted the members of the Exchange was the money-lending one. Around this people were gathered in large numbers, clamouring for money at almost any price. The Westport Coal Company's output last week was 10,909 tons £cwt.. '