Tilletia laevis

Panic of 1907

Nominator(s): JayHenry (talk)

• Featured article candidates/Panic of 1907

• Featured article review/Panic of 1907/archive1

The most interesting, in my opinion, of the panics of the National Banking Era. I believe this meets all the criteria and is particularly timely as well. I look forward to addressing any issues that reviewers feel are outstanding. Special thanks to GA reviewer User:Mattisse who also helped fixing it up to GA status; to User:Protonk and User:Ceoil for extensive and invaluable polishing toward that end; and to User:Robertknyc for checking over so many of the details and helping with the stock data. --JayHenry (talk) 04:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

• Comment From the Aftermath section: "Immigration dropped to 750,000 people in 1909 from 1.2 million people two years earlier." Do Bruner and Carr (don't have the book handy) note this as directly connected to the panic? Also, other elements of the aftermath section seem better explained by the prolonged contraction from Jan-Sep rather than the acute financial panic that is the subject of the article. I'm loathe to change that section without access to the references myself, hence the question. :) Protonk (talk) 06:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

  I'll ponder this. Not sure how one would isolate the effects of the contraction, the stock crash and the bank panic. They are all so interrelated. Perhaps the aftermath section should just make that clearer? --JayHenry (talk) 13:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

  I think its fine; its clearly just context. Ceoil ^sláinte 23:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  I've reworded this a bit. To address the specific question, they note all these points in a couple of paragraphs on the economic fall out in this period of American history. Calomiris finds that panics in this period invariably accompany stock crashes. I'd be reluctant, however, to go too deeply into theories about panics in this article. --JayHenry (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks. I gathered that it was meant to be context but figured the wording could have been clearer. Protonk (talk) 03:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Might note that with courtesy links to the JSTOR articles a subscription is required. (Doesn't invalidate the use of the articles as sources, just makes it clear to folks that the links are courtesy links and not everyone will be able to access them). Ealdgyth - Talk 13:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you please show me which JSTOR articles we've not done this for? I tried to get them all. --JayHenry (talk) 13:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Click on the "check external links" thingie (don't you love my technical vocabulary?) in the tools box. It'll show you all the links colored in a golden yellow that require some sort of subscription/registration. Very handy little tool, don't forget to thank the coder for it! Ealdgyth - Talk 04:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry Ealdgyth, I don't understand what you're asking. I know which links are JSTOR links and have already tried to signify this. Could you please fix this for me so I can see what you're talking about? I sincerely thought I'd done this correctly. --JayHenry (t) 04:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

YOu got it, you just did it differently than I've ever seen it done ... and if I hadn't had such a sinus headache yesterday, I might have noticed it sooner. You're good! Ealdgyth - Talk 13:47, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support, as a copy editor, though I hand no hand or part in the content. The article was fully written before i got involved, and I only took interest because it was full of insight and provided me with a clear look into the turmoil of the period. I think the structure is particularly well drafted; its pacy and engaging, the research is above reproach and the sources cleverly used to weaved together a complicated story into an accesable timeline. Ceoil ^sláinte 01:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

  Thank you, dear Brit. I was very much aiming for a nicely paced and engaging article (too bad we almost never talk about pace at FAC), and I'm glad you noticed. --JayHenry (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

  NB He's not British, but hales from a nearby island. Tony (talk) 11:12, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Pace should of course be factor and Great Fire of London sets the benchmark. Yannis is another who is gifted in this area. Ceoil ^sláinte 10:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support Timely.

• Omg I totally did not look this up, but Jackson got rid of the Second Bank in...1832? Or 1836? Am I close? At any rate, a year should be indicated. How long did the US go without a central bank, and how common were runs up to this point?
• Different tenses? There is no exact measure of when a panic occurred
• The committee issues a scathing report issued?
• I thought it was an interesting read. I did have to check some blue links, not being intimately familiar with some finance terms. I found the article both readable and technical. Short selling, panics, and runs get into some more abstract areas of economics. There were a few places that I thought could benefit by just a bit more help for the average reader unfamiliar with some of these concepts. Otherwise, I enjoyed the article. --Moni3 (talk) 12:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

  Hi Moni! Thanks for the nice words. So, Congress passed, but Jackson vetoed, an extension in 1832, he stopped depositing government money there in 1833, its federal charter expired in 1836 and it actually went out of business in 1841. I went with the 1836 date. Fixed the next two as well. As for your final point... (I was thinking of doing Bear Stearns at some point, but worry about going into collateralized debt obligations, mark-to-market accounting principles and credit default swaps.) If you can point out where specifically the text would benefit from a bit of further explication would help, I can certainly add context to those spots. --JayHenry (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Unsure of the factual, but would this: "The crisis occurred after an attempt by Otto Heinze to corner the market in United Copper failed in October, 1906." be be better as this? "The crisis occurred after the failed attempt by Otto Heinze in October 1906 to corner the market in United Copper." No link for Heinze, so you might consider a phrase telling us that he was ... an industrialist? Was United Copper ", a major US mining company"? Pack too much into the sentence and it becomes unwieldy, but these things are part of the big picture we need to know at the start.
• " With the collapse of New York's third largest trust company"—was that Copper of Knickerbocker? Clearly the latter when you think about it, but you need to explain things more carefully in the lead for non-experts.
• "regional banks" twice in one sentence. Can this be avoided?
• "further" could probably be dropped. Is "pulled" ambiguous/loose? "withdrew"? And by "New York", you mean the state, the city, the stock exchange?
• A lot of folks, particularly non-Americans (but many Americans, too) won't quite know what "anti-trust" means, even though it's linked. I think we're supposed not to rely on links to explain such terms. Again, it might require more wording to get around this, and a consequent split into two sentences.

Antitrust law redirects to Competition law. I think Americans would have no trouble with "antitrust", but perhaps non-Americans are not familiar with laws relating to business competition, and there should be explanations of such concepts for non-American folk. (It only relates peripherally to the article; the various financiers had to go to President Roosevelt to get permission to act in unison, because of the tough antitrust/competition laws which forbade business monopolies or collusion.) Would it be clearer just to remove the concept from the lead, so as not to confuse non-American folk? It could be expanded in the article at the relevant point when the financiers actually go to President Roosevelt for permission. —Mattisse (Talk) 08:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Would "antitrust (competition) law" be OK? Tony (talk) 11:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• The last clause in the lead is the crux of the whole article, yes? Good.

I haven't read further and will return, but there's enough here to chew off for the moment. I have hopes for this one, and if the nominator didn't have a good track record in fixing, I'd recommend withdrawal and resubmission in a few weeks. See what you can do. Great topic if the troops can understand it. Tony (talk) 04:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• PS "backstop" ... "stopped". Radar beam out for those repetitions. Tony (talk) 04:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments on images - There is some work to be done on the images. :)

• Image:Knickerbocker trust company.jpg - The source book needs a name, not just "monograph".

• Image:JP Morgan.jpg - This image needs an original source that demonstrates the photo is from 1903, etc.

• Image:Dow 1904 to 1909.png - The description of this graph needs to include what sources you used for the information.

• Image:Morgan cartoon-1.png - Link to source does not work

• Image:Fed Reserve.JPG - This image lacks a source.

• Image:James J. Stillman.jpg - This image lacks a description, a source, an author, and a date.

I'm reviewing the rest of the article now - I am quite excited to read it! Awadewit (talk) 12:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)