This panic and its immediate results created an entire revolution in the methods of doing business in Wall Street. Prior to this time, the antique element had ruled in things financial, speculative and commercial. This crisis sounded the death knell of old fogyism in the “street.” A younger race of financiers arose and filled the places of the old conservative leaders.
The change was a fine exemplification of the survival of the fittest, and proved that there was a law of natural selection in financial affairs that superseded old conservatism and sealed its doom.
JAMES CLEWS
Of “The Leasows” Staffordshire, England
Father of Henry Clews
HENRY CLEWS
In 1857, at the Time of His Start in Wall Street
Mrs. ELIZABETH KENDRICK CLEWS
Mother of Henry Clews
Until that time, the general idea prevailed that those engaged in financial matters must be people well advanced in years, even to the verge of infirmity. It is the same idea that has been handed down, as if by divine right, from old world prejudices, especially in the learned professions. No doctor was considered a safe prescriber unless his hoary locks, bald head and wrinkled brow proclaimed that he had almost passed the period of exercising human sympathy. The same rule of judgment was applied to the lawyer and the clergyman.
These unworthy prejudices were fostered by the character of the Government of the old country, and nurtured by the surroundings of the venerable monarchies of Europe, where they exist largely even to the present day. So tenacious of life are these old-fashioned ideas, that many of them were found in full vigor, dominating Wall Street affairs up to the crash of 1857, fostering the antique element and choking off salutary enterprise.