Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

There is no excuse, however, for a man in this enlightened age, who professes to be a Shepherd in Israel and a spiritual leader of the people, to remain ignorant of an important fact, or to continue to see that fact through a false medium, when he has the opportunity of coming into Wall Street and seeing for himself. He has no right to set himself up as a censor, a public detractor, and a public libeller upon a set of men and merchants who are the bone and sinew of the commercial and industrial interests and prosperity of the country. It is not only a personal wrong but a public injury.

The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage has perhaps done more than any other clergyman to make our speculators, investors and business men ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the community and in the estimation of John Bull, in whose dominion his so-called sermons are extensively read. Talmage has employed his flashing wit and mountebank eloquence to bring financial disgrace on the business methods of the whole country by the manner in which he has ignorantly vilified Wall Street.

He can go to the Cremorne Garden, Billy McGlory’s, Harry Hill’s and other places of dubious reputation, and make himself acquainted with the real condition of things there.

How far he has penetrated into the green rooms and behind the scenes in these places it is not my business to know, but why should he not treat Wall Street as fairly, where everything is open to inspection, as he does these dens of vice, where midnight scenes of villainous revelry and reckless dissipation reign supreme? Why does he misrepresent Wall Street without knowing anything about it? He can come here and go wherever he wishes without a bodyguard of detectives or fear of molestation. Why is he so particular about doing justice to the brothel and the gaming den, while he airs his ludicrous eloquence to the highest pitch to falsify the respectable business methods of Wall Street?

I recollect the time that men in the higher walks of life, and among the higher classes (if I may use the expression, in opposition to the opinion of the New York Sun, whose editor maintains that we have no classes in this country) would have been ashamed to be seen in Wall Street. Now, men in the same sphere are proud of the distinction, both socially and financially. In fact Wall Street has become a necessity as a healthy stimulant to the rest of the business of the country. Everything looks to this centre as an index of its prosperity. It moves the money that controls the affairs of the world.

Take the Clearing House, for example, with its 50 billions of transactions annually. All but a fraction of this wonderful wealth, compared with which the stupendous pile of Crœsus was a mere pittance, passes through Wall Street, continually adding to its mighty power. This great power, in comparison with which the influence of monarchies is weak, is not, like the riches of these, concentrated chiefly on itself. It is imparted to all the industries and productive forces of the country. Wall Street is a great distributor. It is also universal in its benevolent effects, practically unlimited by either creed or geography.

It has taken greater advantage, for the general good, of scientific discovery than all the scientific societies combined. Wherever the electric wires have penetrated the Wall Street broker has followed. The members of the Stock Exchange are, through the power of electricity, in closer sympathy with the great heart of civilized humanity than all the missionaries and philanthropic societies in the world. They are the great cosmopolitans of the age. In practical sympathy they outshine the most devoted efforts of the benevolent associations of half the continent. They have the means to do it, and this comes chiefly from being practical, and from their strong antipathy as a body to cant and hypocrisy.

There are many popular delusions outside the ranks of the clergy connected with the effort to form a correct estimate of Wall Street affairs by the general public. It is a popular delusion that it is a place where people who are in the “ring” take something for nothing. No idea could be further wide of the mark in regard to Wall Street men as a class, however true it may be of some individual instances, as in other departments of business. Wall Street gives full value for everything it receives, and the country at large is deeply its debtor. Some people may think this a paradox, but there is nothing more easily demonstrated to those who have observed the commercial and industrial progress of the country and the age.

Wall Street has furnished the money that has set the wheels of industry in motion over the vast continent, and in one century has brought us abreast, in the industrial arts, of countries that had from one to two thousand years the start of us. In this respect it has assisted nobly to carry out the ideas of the fathers of the Constitution. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton laid down the doctrine that it would be a betrayal of the interests of posterity to limit the productive energies of this country to raw material. With our present experience we may think it strange that this question should ever have been debated, but it was, even after the old tyranny had been obliged to loosen its grasp on the struggling enterprise of the young Republic. Our old revolutionary sires deserve credit for their foresight, but what would have been the fate of their commercial philosophy if Wall Street had not supplied the sinews of war to cope with the forces of nature, to work our mines and build our railroads, and through these and other means, to attract the teeming population from every clime to cultivate our virgin soil and develop our wonderful industries and resources?

Apropos of the above observations, I may add that during the debate in the British Parliament, on the recognition of the Confederacy, the great manufacturing power in our industrial, financial and commercial progress was clearly exhibited and thoroughly appreciated by British statesmen. It was made one of the strongest arguments, too, by some of the representatives of our jealous and envious cousins on the other side of the “pond,” why Great Britain should recognize and aid the South in the war. Lord Salisbury, then Lord Robert Cecil, at present the leader of the Tory party in England, and the advocate of twenty years’ coercion for Ireland, was one of the bitterest foes of the Union, chiefly on this account. He was one of the Vice-Presidents of the “Southern Independent Association,” for the promotion of the cause of the Rebellion, and for supplying the Confederates with money and arms, and for the ultimate object of founding an empire of slavery on this continent.