Yet one effect of the crisis of 1907 has been to give a new impulse to Wall Street detraction, and sharpen the teeth and claws of the detractors. While many are mistaken enough to hold Wall Street responsible for the past year’s financial disaster, many more are equally mistaken in declaring that President Roosevelt caused them by his speeches and the Government prosecutions of law-breaking railway and Industrial Corporations. Both charges are unreasonable and false, but this consideration is a small matter to those who have no hesitation in making reckless assertions which they are unable to prove, and who are as ready to vent their spite as they are their prejudices.
Many indeed without knowing anything about Wall Street speculation, and who have never speculated anywhere, blame speculation for a host of evils that are in no way due to it. Some of them would even close the Stock Exchange to stop speculation there, forgetting apparently that this would deprive investors and banking institutions as well as speculators of a market for securities, and make all the stocks and bonds now listed and dealt in there practically unmarketable. In such an event there would most certainly be a fall in their prices greater than any we witnessed in 1907.
It is true that in the manipulation of stocks matched orders may have been occasionally resorted to, despite the rule against it on the Stock Exchange, but it is only because of the difficulty, or impossibility, of discovering or proving it, for there is no body of men subject to stricter discipline, or more amenable to it, than the members of the New York Stock Exchange, nor any more patriotic, as their generous acts during the Civil War, and at other times, have abundantly shown.
Neither should it be forgotten that they pay the State of New York a tax of two dollars on every hundred shares of stock they sell, which is an important source of revenue to the commonwealth. That the Stock Exchange, as a free market for securities, is indispensable to the country is beyond question. It is necessary to our national needs, and I am proud of being one of the oldest of its members, my membership dating from 1864; and I am able from long personal experience and observation to testify to the integrity, soundness, and general good character of my fellow members and the banking community of Wall Street.
Therefore take my word for it that Wall Street is not as black as it is painted, and that anyone’s money is as safe there as anywhere in business, if properly placed, and handled with good judgment. If any of it is lost it is by its owner, and he has only himself to blame for his ill luck. But it is always to the interest of his banker and broker to have him make money, for when a customer loses his money his broker in some degree shares the loss by losing him as a customer.
In conclusion, I hope that if any of you ever take a flyer in Wall Street, you will come out of it, with flying colors, on the winning side, and with a good opinion of the Street proportioned to the magnificence of your success!
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
THE FINANCIAL AND TRADE SITUATION, PAST, PRESENT
AND FUTURE, REVIEWING THE CRISIS OF 1907, WITH CAUSES AND REMEDIES.[[10]]
[10]. An address delivered by Henry Clews at the annual meeting of the Pittsburg Chapter, American Institute of Banking, at Pittsburg, Pa., on Tuesday evening, February 25, 1908.