available for distribution amounted to $37,468,859. That surplus was nominally in the banks, but really in the hands of borrowers who used it for legitimate business or speculation. Withdrawing it from the banks meant, therefore, withdrawing it from the business men or speculators who had borrowed it. The funds so withdrawn were made for some time unavailable. They passed under the control of the several states, some of which used them for public improvements, some for educational purposes, some for other objects. The money would, of course, gradually find its way back into the channels of business, but then into channels other than those from which it had been taken.
The distribution among the states was to take place in four quarterly installments; but the preparations for the transfer of large sums from one place to another — and a transfer, too, regardless of the condition of commerce, or of the money market, or of the needs of any economic interest, or of any person — had to be begun at once and vigorously. A fierce contraction of loans and discounts necessarily followed. The exchanges between different parts of the country were violently disturbed, so that when the first installment of the surplus was delivered to the states the bodily transportation of specie and bank-notes from place to place became necessary to an extraordinary degree. Millions upon millions of dollars went on their travels, North and South, East and West, being
