McKay's Sense of a Financial Bubble

McKay was an advocate for so-called direct railways which were meant to connect pairs of cities or towns by the shortest route possible avoiding detours. The few direct lines that were built turned out to be financial failures. It turned out that railways were both more expensive to build and to run and worse yet the demand for them was much lower than expected as is often the case in investment manias optimistic projections outran reality. At the end of 1845 railway share prices began to crash poor harvests combined with anticipation of increased demand for money for a railway construction led to an increase in interest rates. McKay repeatedly assured his readers that on the whole railway investments would be profitable but at no point