WHETHER the monetary disturbances have reached their climax and matters will now steadily mend, or whether we are destined to witness a fresh outbreak from some unexpected quarter, is a question on which the most expert financier would hardly care to venture too dogmatic an opinion. Outside the financial world, the business community in this country, to whatever section of it they belong, have had to stand and watch events for which they realize they are in no way responsible, but for which they have been penalized all the same, and cannot see, moreover, what is to be the eventual upshot of it all. Of course a nation’s, like a firm’s, customers, when they get into trouble are bound to involve loss upon those with whom they deal, and there is nothing surprising that industries like linen and jute, which are still dependent on the United States for the disposal of a very large proportion of their output, should find a sudden and alarming contra6lion enforced upon them. For one reason or another, however, our export trade with the United States has dwindled to such a relatively small percentage of the whole, that it has ceased to be an important factor in British industry, while trade in the great quantity of raw material and food which we import from that country should be stimulated to our advantage through cheapening prices, enabling us to lay in stocks on advantageous terms to the benefit of our industries. But the monetary crisis communicated itself to us in a very acute form, upsetting all calculations and placing us in a waterlogged condition so far as new enterprise is concerned, nobody knowing whether the necessary financial facilities will be forthcoming, or, if available, on what terms. This applies both to home industry and foreign trade, though by general consent the former was never in sounder or healthier condition. We pride ourselves, too, on the soundness of our banking system, and hold it up as a model for other countries to imitate ; yet there is the possibility of there being an element of danger in it, less perhaps to its own solvency than to the stability of trade which is still largely dependent on it.

This suggests itself from more reasons than one. There was a very serious crisis in the United States in 1873, through which this country passed almost as scathless as it is doing to-day, though with much the same inconvenience. A few years later a number of mercantile firms engaged in the East and West India trades, and more or less mixed up in each other’s affairs, suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed, culminating in the downfall of the City of Glasgow Bank, and the widespread ruin that ensued , while still a poignant memory to some, is to most active business men to-day only a matter of history. It resulted, however, in an important banking reform limiting the liability of bank shareholders. Another collapse, greater in magnitude, though less devastating in its results and just as little expected as the other, occurred in 1890, while as recently as 1906 the suspension of an important Indian banking -firm was announced, the ill consequences of whose failure fortunately were localized. We all hope and believe that no trouble of this sort is brewing in our midst now ; but these things come like a bolt from the blue, and the question we have to ask is whether if one were shot at the present time we should be prepared to withstand it?

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