In Strong’s view, something about the American character—the exuberance, the driving optimism, the naive embrace of fads—lent itself to periods of speculative excess. “It seems a shame that the best sort of plans can be handicapped by a speculative orgy,” he mused almost philosophically to Norman at the end of 1925, “and yet the temper of the people of this country is such that these situations cannot be avoided.”
