Speculation, as we know it in our time, is a very different affair from what it was fifty, and even thirty, years ago. Value in all markets in our day is unsettled with the lightning flash that laughs at the bed of the Atlantic as no better than a span of space, while the forces that close in on all sides, representing demand and supply, with a responsive thunder-clap, adjust the new level as each market grasps in a moment the cause of the disturbance.
The Demoralisation caused by Temporary Success.
One of the great evils which follow upon the increase of speculation is the demoralisation it brings in its train. Money easily made is very often as easily lost, after which it is difficult to rekindle that healthy desire to work which is fostered by the acquirement of moderately increasing gains through close application to business. Money that cost but little trouble to procure is generally carelessly spent, which, as a rule, does more harm than good to him that gained it.
The New Era in Speculation.
The commencement of a new era in speculation dates from November 13th, 1851, when a telegraph cable was successfully laid across the straits of Dover, and the opening and closing prices of the funds in Paris were known at the London Stock Exchange within business hours. From that day one European bourse after another has joined hands, and the political shock which affects one market, henceforth acts through the electric wires, more or less upon all, according to the extent to which the same securities are dealt in at different cities.
Collapse through Over-speculation in Austria.
Side by side with the acquirement of means by the masses of those European states which up to a comparatively recent date have been poor, has speculation as a business grown, and it has been making rapid strides from the breaking out of the civil war in America, when the augmented price of cotton laid the foundations for the manufacture of this staple in parts of Austria and Prussia, where it has taken root, and according to all accounts flourishes in successful competition as regards certain descriptions of cotton fabrics with the mills of Lancashire. New seats of production have been created, and new currents of profit have found for themselves centres for investment. The sharp little panic which broke out on the Vienna bourse in April, 1873, was due to the too heavy superstructure of the new, and much too rapid, speculation, reared recklessly upon very slender foundations. There, in a city comparatively innocent of such collapses, might be seen the demoralisation which follows upon hastily and too easily acquired riches. The effect of the financial crash, which was mended up in a few weeks so that a spread of the crisis was for the time arrested, was such, however, upon the nerves of all classes of the community, that the journals had leaders written in such desponding phrases, that readers at a distance from the scene were inclined to believe that the capital of Austria was about forever to be blotted out from the roll of financial centres. Some little sympathetic effect was produced at Berlin, where considerable inflation also existed as a consequence of the activity in commercial affairs, which followed the large war indemnity payments made by France. There is, in fact, on all sides evidence that the speculation not only in stocks and shares, but in all commodities throughout Europe, has been carried on for several years past, on a scale which was temporarily checked by the Franco-German war, far exceeding anything ever known or heard of before.
Trustworthy figures give the best and surest estimate of the increase in the business of the chief Stock markets of Europe, and where we find the stock brokers and jobbers have increased in number we may safely conclude that the business that is transacted in the Stock markets has increased also.[30]
Increase in the number of Members of the London Stock Exchange.
In the London Stock Exchange we find the number of stock brokers and jobbers has increased as follows. We start from the year following the great collapse of 1866, when the ranks were perhaps somewhat thinned: