Wall-Street Panic (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT) NEW YORK, Ocr. 24 A Niagara of liquidation fell upon the American Stock Exchanges to-day. For three hours trading was completely de- moralized with blocks of 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 shares of stock pressing for sale and prices melting away 5 and 10 points at a time. Never before, even at the outbreak of the Great War, was there such a volume of transactions. On the New York Stock Exchange in the first hour of trading alone more than 1,600,000 shares changed hands-four -tines as many as in the same hour yes- terday-and by 1.30 o'clock the total was over 10,000,000 shares. By then it was reported that the Chicago and Buffalo Stock Exchanges had closed. The situation was so serious that shortly after 1 o'clock Mr. Charles E. Mitchell, the chairman of the National City Bank; Mr. W. C. Potter, chairman of the Guaranty Trust Company; Mr. Seward Prosser, chairman of the Bankers Trust Company, and Mr. Albert H. Wiggin, chairman of the Chase National Bank, hastily assembled at Messrs. .iorgan and Co.'s offices to confer on measures for relieving public appre- hension. Shortly afterwards Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, one of the Morgan partners, in a statement to the Press, attempted to minimize the excitement by saying that there had been " a little distress selling" on the Stock Exchange but that his con- ferees had found that there were no brokerage houses in difficulty. Reports as to maintenance of margins, he said, were very satisfactory. Asked if the worst had been seen, he replied, " I don't think we tried to analyse that situation." The trouble was " technical rather than fun- damentaL" Mr. Lamont's statement and the banking support lent to the market at that time produced a rapid rally in a number of stocks, although trading con- tinued to be very excited. The fact that stock tickers were then more than two hours behind dealings on the floor did not lessen the nervousness, for the actual course of share prices could be known to customers in brokerage houses and elsewhere only by brief tele- phoned reports covering a few securities, and for most of the time telephone facili- ties were utterly inadequate to deal with the pressure of the demands upon them. The same was reported to be true of tele- phone facilities throughout the city, as, seemingly, half the population tried to get in touch with Wal Street. SHORT-LIVED CONFIDENCE At the outset of the day the TJnited States Steel, one of the market leaders, opened trading with 5,000 shares chang- ing hands at 1I points above last night's closing prices. A number of other active issues opened likewise with overnight game, and for a little while it was thought that there had come an end to yesterday's liquidation, which had broken the prices of leading industrials more than 20 points. But the confidence was short-lived. In- side of half-an-hour the pent-up sell- ing burst upon the market again. There were wide, open breaks in such recent speculative favourites as Radio, Montgomery Ward, American and Foreign Power, Columbia Gas, Consoli- dated Gas, American Can, Steel, and American Telephone and Telegraph, the most widely distributed of aU the stocks -a wholesale unloading of accounts in which the margin had been worn thin by a succession of declines. Good stocks feil with the bad. Losses of 10 to 15 and even 20 to 30 points became too numerous to note, and in the very high-priced shares the losses were far greater still. Call money fell from 6 to 5 per cent., but in the panicky state of traders' minds neither easy money nor anything else was of avail to halt the deluve. On the New York Kerb Exchange. in San Francisco, and everywhere else on the Exchanges that remained open there were the sanie scenes of frantic selling, and this was true, but to a lesser degree, of the grain markets. Outright panic was never very far fromu the markets during the day until after the bankers' statement was broadcast. Even then, for all the rally of such stocks as Steel, American Can, Radio, Westinghouse Electric, and General Mlotors, markets had many new moments of feverish unsettlement. At 3 o'clock, the end of the trading day, the ticker recording Stock Exchange transactions was 180 minutes behind the trading. The number of shares dealt mn had then reached 12,880,000, or 4,500,000 more than on the previous record high day, March 26 of this year. The trans- actions on the Kerb Exchange had likewise established a new higii record with 6,337,000 shares. One stock on the Kerb, Cities Service Common, had had a turnover of 1,151,000 shares. This like- wise was a record for any one stock, as wvas the size of the opening transaction in it-namely, 150,000 shares. After the close of the market, it was announced that representatives of t1n leading " wire " houses, that is, those with elaborate private telegraph and telephone systems, spread all over the country, had arranged to hold a con- ference this afternoon to determine theit future action. At the same time the Federal Reserve Board announced that it would issue a statement later in the day, In the morning, when the market was at the height of its excitement, the Treasury at Washington gave out what were in tended to be reassuring statements ta the effect that the losses in the Stock Market were mainly those of paper pro- fits and not of real values, and that general business was fundamentally sound. 'The Treasury intimated, however, that if the declines continued the proposal to re- duce taxes next year might be abandnnp- WALL-STREET - PANIC RECORD SELLING OF STOCKS HEAVY FALLS IN * PRICES