An Age of Panics
“In one word, excitement, anxiety, terror, panic, pervades all classes and ranks.”
Thus did one observer describe the onset of the Panic of 1837, which sent the entire American economy into a tailspin that lasted for years. Such events struck at least once per generation during the long nineteenth century, spinning the nation through a dizzying cycle of booms and busts. Yet when Americans set about explaining these economic swings, they did so without many of tools we take for granted today – data on supply and demand, indicators like GDP or the unemployment rate, and models of the relationship between interest rates and growth, for example.
Instead, they turned to technical and artistic images that told a range of stories about how the economy functioned, why it bounced men and women up and down with little warning, and what was to be done to steady it.
