The Abominations of Modern Society

by T. De Witt Talmage

I will not deny that there are special temptations connected with this business even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to the engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash into the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the engine or the Stock Exchange.

A clever young man, of twenty-five years of age, bought ten shares in the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The stock went up five dollars per share, and he made fifty dollars by the operation. His mother, knowing his temperament, said to him, "I wish you had lost it." But, encouraged, he entered another operation, and took ten shares in another railroad and made two hundred dollars. By this time he was ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in three years, forty thousand dollars, ruined his health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool brain, and well-balanced temperament.

But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the broker and operator, there are transactions every day undertaken in our cities that can only be characterized as superb outrage and villany; and there are members of Christian churches who have been guilty of speculations that, in the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thunder them down to everlasting companionship with the lowest gamblers that ever pitched pennies for a drink.

It is not necessary that I should draw the difficult line between honorable and dishonorable speculation. God has drawn it through every man's conscience. The broker guilty of "cornering" as well knows that he is sinning against God and man, as though the flame of Mount Sinai singed his eyebrows. He hears that a brother broker has sold "short," and immediately goes about with a wise look, saying: "Erie is going down—Erie is going down; prepare for it." Immediately the people begin to sell; he buys up the stock; monopolizes the whole affair; drags down the man who sold short; makes largely, pockets the gain, and thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. You call it "cornering." I call it gambling, theft, highway robbery, villany accursed.

It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful in the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member of one of the churches of the city went into a broker's office and said: "Get me one hundred shares of Reading, and carry it; I will leave a margin of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up, according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every few days the operator called to ask the broker what success. The stock still declined. The operator was so terribly excited that the broker asked him what was the matter. He replied: "To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation of what I was sure I was going to get by the operation, I made a very large subscription to the Missionary Society."

The nation has become so accustomed to frauds that no astonishment is excited thereby. The public conscience has for many years been utterly debauched by what were called fancy stocks, morus multicaulis, Western city enterprises, and New England developments.

If a man find on his farm something as large as the head of a pin, that, in a strong sunlight, sparkles a little, a gold company is formed; books are opened; working capital declared; a select number go in on the "ground floor;" and the estates of widows and orphans are swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into the same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming out—showing the total depravity of a woman's heart—she again went into the same business, and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and down in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.

There are scores of men to-day on the streets, whose costly family wardrobes, whose rosewood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose stately mansions, are made out of the distresses of sewing-women, whose money they gathered up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat in the golden tankards. There is human blood in the crimson plush. There are the bones of unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the piano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?" Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, crying: "Come to judgment!"

For the warning of young men, I shall specify but two of the world's most gigantic swindles—one English, and the other American. In England, in the early part of the last century, reports were circulated of the fabulous wealth of South America. A company was formed, with a stock of what would be equal to thirty millions of our dollars. The government guaranteed to the company the control of all the trade to the South Sea, and the company was to assume the entire debt of England, then amounting to one hundred and forty millions of dollars. Magnificent project! The English nation talked and dreamed of nothing but Peruvian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illimitable! When five million pounds of new stock was offered at three hundred pounds per share, it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty million dollars of the stock was subscribed for, when there were but five millions offered. South Sea went up, until in the midsummer month the stock stood at one thousand per cent. The whole nation was intoxicated. Around about this scheme, as might have been expected, others just as wild arose. A company was formed with ten million dollars of capital for importing walnut trees from Virginia. A company for developing a wheel to go by perpetual motion, with a capital of four million dollars. A company for developing a new kind of soap. A company for insuring against losses by servants, with fifteen million dollars capital. One scheme was entitled: "A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is—capital two million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five hundred each. Further information to be given in a month."

The books were opened at nine o'clock in the morning. Before night a thousand shares were taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So successful was the day's work, that that night the projector of the enterprise went out of the business, and forever vanished from the public. But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers had their ornamented certificates of stock to comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, speaking of those times, says "that from morning until evening 'Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense mass of living beings composed of the most incongruous materials, and, in all things save the mad pursuit in which they were employed, the very opposite in habits and conditions."