It was a period of great anxiety in the financial world.  Men felt the unrest, even though they could not give definite reasons.  There had been several panics in the stock market throughout the summer; and leading financiers and railroad presidents seemed to have got the habit of prognosticating the ruin of the country every time they made a speech at a banquet.

But apparently men could not agree about the causes of the trouble.  Some insisted that it was owing to the speeches of the President, to his attacks upon the great business interests of the country.  Others maintained that the world’s supply of capital was inadequate, and pointed out the destruction of great wars and earthquakes and fires.  Others argued that there was not enough currency to do the country’s business.  Now and again there rose above the din the shrill voice of some radical who declared that the stock collapses had been brought about deliberately; but such statements seemed so preposterous that they were received with ridicule whenever they were heeded at all.  To Montague the idea that there were men in the country sufficiently powerful to wreck its business, and sufficiently unscrupulous to use their power—­the idea seemed to him sensational and absurd.

But he had a talk about it one evening with Major Venable, who laughed at him.  The Major named half a dozen men—­Waterman and Duval and Wyman among them—­who controlled ninety per cent of the banks in the Metropolis.  They controlled all three of the big insurance companies, with their resources of four or five hundred million dollars; one of them controlled a great transcontinental railroad system, which alone kept a twenty-or thirty-million dollar “surplus” for stock-gambling purposes.

“If any two or three of those men were to make up their minds,” declared the Major, “they could wreck the business of this country in a day.  If there were stocks they wanted to pick up, they could knock them to any price they chose.”

“How would they do it?” asked the other.

“There are many ways.  You noticed that the last big slump began with the worst scarcity of money the Street has known for years.  Now suppose those men should gradually accumulate a lot of cash in the banks, and make an agreement to withdraw it at a certain hour.  Suppose that the banks that they own, and the banks where they own directors, and the insurance companies which they control—­suppose they all did the same!  Can’t you imagine the scurrying around for money, the calling in of loans, the rush to realise on holdings?  And when you have a public as nervous as ours is, when you have credit stretched to the breaking-point, and everybody involved—­don’t you see the possibilities?”

“It seems like playing with dynamite,” said Montague.

“It’s not as bad as it might be,” was the answer.  “We are saved by the fact that these big men don’t get together.  There are too many jealousies and quarrels.  Waterman wants easy money, and gets the Treasury Department to lend ten millions; Wyman, on the other hand, wants high prices, and he goes into the Street and borrows fifteen millions; and so it goes.  There are a half dozen big banking groups in the city—­”