From a letter to the editor in the April 10, 1907 NYT:

During the Presidential campaign of 1896 Gov. Altgeld in his Music Hall speech at Chicago said: "Prices will continue to go down, down, never to rise again as long as the gold standard exists."

I made the statement to a friend that "Mr. Altgeld is mistaken, and that the tide will begin to turn in 1898, and by 1900 everybody will see it, and by 1903 an era of high prices will be attained, and that the building business will be good after that time, and remain good until the next panic, which is due to occur in 1913; that this will occur whether McKinley or Bryan is elected President."

The crest of the wave was passed more than a year ago but the volume of business does not yet indicate it.

These conclusions are not guessed, but are scientifically arrived at. No flurry in Wall Street can bring on a commercial depression until the conditions are ripe for it. If all the stocks and bonds and all the speculators who deal in them were blotted out it could not affect the volume of business appreciably. The cause of the ebb and flow of the tide of business lies wholly in the labor question proper. The volume of money, or its kind in use, has practically nothing to do with it.

JOSEPH EASTMAN