An Editor's Grump at the Panic of 1907
Amid a national financial collapse, a local newspaper editor offers a biting critique of 'high finance' and presidential rhetoric.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Encouraging reports come from the east that the financial excitement, the period of uncertainty, the panic, or whatever we may conveniently call it, has passed. The cause of the panic is too much jingoism in politics. With Roosevelt, the president of the United States, howling at every station during his junketing trips—howling to the world that American financial methods were a libel upon the money of the country, and Europe acting upon the suggestion and refusing to purchase our securities, what could we expect? We must remember that this country is on a gold basis. When the basis of value disappears, we must expect all other values to decrease accordingly. We find a new lesson to be learned—'The First Lesson in Elastic Currency.' This will be the issue in the next campaign, and until we pass the examination at the graduation period of our education in finance, we may expect the effects of the recent panic.
“The cause of the panic is too much jingoism in politics.”
This editorial captures the intense populist anger directed toward Washington D.C. during economic downturns. The 'Panic of 1907' was a severe banking crisis that mirrors later modern debates regarding the influence of executive rhetoric on market confidence.
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