The Financial Crisis

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 12, 1857

The Financial Crisis.

The following concerning the present crisis in money matters is from a sermon preached by Francis Wayland D. D. Oct. 11th, 1857.

"There seems but one subject at present capable of arresting the attention of men. Go where you will, in the city or in the country, on the railroad, or by the fireside, no one converses on anything else than the finances. If you pass through the street, you at once perceive that some matter of universal importance is agitating the minds of your fellow citizens. Every countenance is furrowed with anxiety. Men stand together in groups conversing in an undertone, as they suggest to each other the probability of some additional calamity, which it seems improper just now to make public; or listen in silence to some earnest speaker who is condemning what men have done, or what they have not done, to relieve the universal distress. Even a politician now can hardly gain an audience. Elections are coming on, and no one heeds the prophecy or cares about its fulfillment. The civil war in India, an event of more consequence to civilization and christianity than any which has occurred since the battle of Waterloo, seems hardly of sufficient importance to be made a subject of conversation. Nothing in the daily papers is read but telegraphic dispatches from every city in the Union, telling of unexampled distress, and announcing the failure of houses that were considered above the reach of vicissitude, or banks whose circulation forms the earnings of multitudes. And if you go beyond this, and ask the signs of the times of those whose sagacity is rarely at fault, and whose means of knowledge is most to be relied on, they tell you that they see no light. Private accounts are even more distressing than public report. City after city succumbs, and the rest stand on the verge of suspension. Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming. It seems like the deep, choking stillness which precedes the earthquake, when the ground begins to tremble beneath our feet, and every one is looking in dismay for the catastrophe which is to overwhelm the labor of centuries in one indiscriminate ruin."