WHAT A DIRECTOR SHOULD BE.
It is worthy of remark and imitation, that neither the president nor the cashier of the Wall-street Stock Company ever ran away with a dollar of their money; so rigid a surveillance did Mr. Single-Eye keep over its affairs. Although nothing but a director himself, he held the true doctrine, that directors should really be the head of an institution, and that the president and cashier were merely heads of the clerks. Mr. Single-Eye was moreover of opinion, that it was better for a director to hustle the money into his own pocket, and make sure of the gain, than to suffer another to do it, and incur the odium himself. To be sure, he was somewhat at variance with Mr. Broker on this point, but Single-Eye had the power, and there is nothing like that for enforcing a good reason.
DEGENERACY OF OUR DAYS.
And here I cannot forbear to remark on the degeneracy of these days, when directors so often give up all management to the presidents and cashiers, thus leading them into temptation, and provoking them to do that, which they might do themselves with greater safety, because they are less immediately responsible. Alas! how many men, with their families, have been ruined by this cruel lack of vigilance.
I should not have said so much on the origin of stock companies and brokers, but that I thought it necessary, to a more perfect understanding of what shall follow. Having said so much, it is proper that I should make known the fate of this first attempt at stock jobbing. And it is especially necessary that I should do so, for the benefit of those widows and orphans, who have any doubts about the entire safety of investing their little fortunes in the like securities.
Every body has read of the severe reproof once administered, by a Spanish lady, to a gentleman who complained of the indelicacy of their statuary. She told him that, had his own mind been pure, he would never have discovered indelicacy in what was “true to nature.”
STOCK COMPANIES.
It is well known that stock companies, such as banks, insurance companies, trust companies, and the like, are got up entirely by disinterested men, for the purpose of affording an opportunity for ladies of a “certain age,” widows, and orphans, to invest what little funds they have in safety, with the certainty of a moderate income. Accordingly, whenever a company is started, and the stock all subscribed for by the managers, this class of people are particularly favored, in being permitted to purchase some shares at a trifling premium of ten or fifteen per cent., and urged to take an interest before they shall go higher. And then, after two or three years’ refusal to make any dividend, for fear they might spend it imprudently, the same gentlemen who sold the stock, are willing to buy it back again at a discount of only fifty per cent.; and the poor spinster is perfectly satisfied of the safety of her investment, because, having once parted with the money, she can never get it back again. This class of stockholders are also particularly favored and acceptable, because they never want to borrow, and never find fault with the management; and if, by chance, they should suspect themselves to be badly used, a tear shed in secret is the only complaint they ever make.
EVIL TO HIM WHO EVIL THINKS.
I will lay it down as a rule, therefore, that whoever distrusts the integrity and good intentions of those gentlemen, who get up a stock company, and collect within its vaults the widow’s mite and the orphan’s support, is no better than the gentleman before alluded to, whose perversion of the luxuries of taste flowed from the impurity of his own mind.