Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

It is now over two years since public disclosures of this kind as well as of railway rebating began, followed by the collapse of the copper manipulation and, very recently, by the scandals connected with the New York Traction situation. No wonder, therefore, that confidence is seriously disturbed. And who is responsible? Not President Roosevelt and Mr. Hughes, the famous life insurance investigator, who have been instruments of exposure, but the individuals who conceived and conducted these unlawful operations. Of course the guilty protest against financial house cleaning; and they endeavor to ward off official investigations on the plea that these disturb confidence, and make the innocent suffer. But the whole responsibility should be placed where it belongs—upon the perpetrators of misdeeds, and not upon those who, in the discharge of the duties of their high office, have been the means of turning on the light and preventing future operations of the kind. Those who have trifled with the public interest, and displayed a blind disregard of the people’s rights, are the real transgressors.

It becomes daily more evident that when all our railway and industrial corporations are known to be honestly managed, and when stockholders and investors get their due, values will be more stable, and American credit, which is now at a low ebb in all the great financial centers of the world, will be restored to its rightful place.

Throughout all these disclosures of illegal methods and wholesale graft there is one gleam of encouragement, and that is, that public opinion is aroused and will insist upon clean as well as capable corporate management in the future, and thus these disclosures will result in the raising of the moral standard of corporate management. Meanwhile, the public is disturbed by these revelations, and wonders what financial irregularity will be brought to light next. The action of many corporate managers has seemed to indicate that they think little of violating the laws, and that, if they are broken by one high in authority, or in social life, immunity must be granted; or some subordinate be made to suffer instead of themselves. If a poor man commits a crime, he is sent to jail. Sympathy for his family may sometimes make the judge lenient as to the time of his incarceration, but, however short the term, it generally brings sorrow and want to the family for which he is the sole provider. Thus, the innocent have to suffer with the guilty in such cases.

In corporate matters, if a manager or controlling capitalist breaks the law, justice should punish him, as it would anyone else. The law should be no respecter of persons.

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the people broke Nature’s laws; and this government, although the best known to man, would be destroyed in the course of time, if the rich and unscrupulous were permitted to break the laws with impunity, while the poor were punished for much less serious offenses. This invidious distinction has caused those who have suffered by the corrupt and illegal practices of corporations and their managers to unload their grievances upon the President. In their communications they tell him that, while many from their ranks are being sent to prison, they fail to see any of the rich being sent there, although the evidence against them is unquestionable. This unjust distinction, if it continues, I repeat, cannot fail to have an unsettling effect upon the American people, and may finally result in something more, as this is a government of the people, for the people and by the people, and a discrimination in favor of the wealthy—whether corporations or individuals—will not be very long permitted by the plain people, who are largely in the majority.

President Roosevelt took the oath at his inauguration to be guided by the Constitution, and as the Constitution requires that the Executive of the nation shall enforce the laws, he would have been derelict in his duty and unfaithful to his oath if he had not taken the action he has, to compel corporations to conform to the Interstate Commerce and Sherman Anti-Trust laws and their amendments. Whenever evidence has reached him, through the complaints of people who have suffered in consequence of the violation of these laws, he has very properly handed the material received over to the Attorney General to make the necessary investigation, and as in every case thus prosecuted the results have justified all he has done as to these, he deserves great credit. The so-called indiscriminate attacks that are claimed to have been made by him upon corporations and business interests have no sound basis. So far as his intentions go, he has only attacked dishonesty and law-breaking. While I fully approve of what Mr. Roosevelt has done in the way of reform, I confess I do not fully approve of his too oft repeated passionate utterances on the subject during the recent period of distrust. It undoubtedly has helped to unsettle the minds of timid investors and weak-minded depositors. The President has probably been a little too outspoken at a time when silence would have been golden. There are periods when the least said the better; still, I applaud his good intentions and his excellent deeds, which cannot fail to prove fruitful in the end. We should all be willing, therefore, to overlook his recent volubility and frequent reiterations.

A short time ago France stood ready to invest large sums in American bonds and stocks. But just after her first venture in Pennsylvania Railroad bonds our corporation scandals filled the air with their unpleasant odor and French capital was locked at once against everything American.

When all the old evils have been exposed, and wrongs righted, and foreign as well as home investors again seek investments for their funds in our securities, we may rest assured that, having undergone rigid investigation, they will be looked upon as the best in the world.

That President Roosevelt should be blamed in any way for the banking troubles, business failures and losses that have been made in the stock market is unfair; but it is always the case that the Executive in office bears the brunt of whatever disasters of the kind occur during his administration.

Those of us whose hair is no longer black, brown, sandy or red,—or very abundant,—can well remember the calumny and evil reports that were heaped upon the broad shoulders of the well beloved Abraham Lincoln. The noble cause he fought for cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, and of course there were very many who suffered at that time by the war. Of these many were most bitter in their denunciation of President Lincoln, and this nearly broke the heart of that great man, but did not for a moment cause him to desist in the work he saw it was his duty to perform to the end. To-day, those who traduced him join freely with the whole nation in doing honor to his memory. President Roosevelt may be severe in the frankness with which he reiterates his intention to punish those who break the law; but, in the distant future, the world at large will remember him as one who dared to suffer under unjust denunciation for the sake of right, and even now the great mass of the people are with him in his efforts to improve and purify business conditions.