There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic, from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its victims’ hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.
Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:
“Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow. There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day $95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day, or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling.”
A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his defiance.
“Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone’s doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years. All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks, counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:
“First, the ‘In Gold We Trust’ schemer who is of the ‘System’ type, but who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know scores of men, who stand high on ‘the Street’ and in the social world, who have tens of millions that they have filched by ‘System’ tricks, if not by legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley’s, the trick of selling short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen produce panics and who were applauded by ‘the Street’ and the press for their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful, they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic, the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I attempted to bring on a panic.
“Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic, when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have taken place in any event.
“The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their fellow-members’ trickery.
“Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself, or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly, where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account, the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange that the broker in question was about to work Brownley’s discovery and he could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be taken by others and he could be ruined.
“Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars, impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed. When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can no longer be robbed by the ‘System.’ In leaving you, the Exchange, and stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a soul that has been withered by the ‘System’s’ poison, with a full sense of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have any, with this argument: ‘If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed, no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will fall.’