As we have not yet reached the point of abolishing property altogether, we may concede that these great combinations can do for individual business and for the country at large what cannot be done without them. They furnish the large sums which, from time to time, are required by the Government, the State, the town, the manufacturer, the tradesman, and the speculator, and to each of these—especially the speculator—the tremendous development of this country is due. Because of speculation in securities, the 26,000 million dollars’ worth of capital represented on the New York Stock Exchange by the stocks and bonds of railroad and industrial corporations have found a public market through which necessary capital has been raised, and the total increases yearly by about one billion dollars. This is “big” business, to be sure, but it is the bigness of the whole people, for the welfare of each is the welfare of all.
Such large affairs naturally set people thinking; men want light; they want to know, entirely aside from the doctrines of political platforms and stump orators, to what extent the relation of capital to business meets the test of proved effectiveness and economic worth. Especially do they seek information in this oft-discussed matter of speculation in securities and of the bank’s relationship to it; and here, fortunately, there is no lack of results by which that relationship may be tested.
Pragmatism tells us that as phenomena appear, become mighty, and persist in accordance with natural processes, so they demonstrate their ultimate good and their obvious usefulness. In its especial application to the matters we have discussed, pragmatism teaches us to wait for results in estimating a particular business method, and then to study it in its relation to all business. Applying this test to the use of loanable bank funds by those who deal or speculate in the things that represent American enterprise, we find that the very existence of these enterprises depends upon the maintenance of these methods. Finally, both the banks and the Stock Exchange are the trustees of the property of others, and in that capacity their reciprocal relations are certain to be attended by greater caution than if they dealt in a freehanded way with their own property. The magnitude of their undertakings spells responsibility, and responsibility breeds sobriety.
CHAPTER V
PUBLICITY IN EXCHANGE AFFAIRS; CAUTIONS AND PRECAUTIONS
If a list of “don’ts” were compiled for the public that is interested in the Stock Exchange, the first prohibition would be “don’t believe all you read in the newspapers”; at least do a little independent thinking before jumping at conclusions. The relationship between the Stock Exchange and the metropolitan press is, with perhaps one exception, cordial in the extreme. The newspaper man is a thinking person; if he were not he could not hold his job. He knows, for example, that the Stock Exchange is an indispensable part of the machinery of modern business; he is aware of the fact that it maintains a high standard of probity. He would be the last man to attack the institution unfairly, and he is the first to defend it, editorially, when misconceptions and unfounded suspicions are rife.
But on the other hand, newspapers want news; their circulation and the popularity of their advertising columns depend upon the skill and ability with which they parade before the public everything that happens. If a politician or a clever and ambitious lawyer makes a startling charge against an institution that occupies a conspicuous place in our affairs, that is news, and the newspaper must print it. In order to make the news attractive to the jaded palate of its readers the dry-as-dust parts must be skimmed off, and seasoning added in such peppers and vinegars as the occasion permits, with a final dash of spice in the shape of pungent headlines that will arrest and hold the appetite.
Somewhere off in the dim recesses of the editorial page there may be a sober (and deadly dull) analysis of the matter, revealing the politician or the notoriety-seeker in his true colors, but this is often ignored by the reader. What he wants with his morning coffee is his daily thrill, and he finds it under blatant headlines on the first page. Because he wants it, and because he won’t be happy till he gets it, the newspaper gives it to him on a generous scale. Until we arrive at a Utopian state in which art, religion, and kindred abstractions satisfy the mind to the exclusion of fires, riots, suffragettes and Stock Exchanges, we cannot blame the newspapers for giving us what we want, nor the politicians for helping the good work along.
And yet, as Mr. Bryce pointed out in his lectures at Yale on “The Hindrances to Good Citizenship,” this willingness to accept as conclusions the scare-heads in newspapers which are not, and never were intended to formulate serious opinions, lays us open to the charge of indolence; “the neglect to think” thus becomes a serious phase of a deficient sense of civic duty. In countries where men are imperfectly educated, or in rural districts where means of acquiring knowledge are small and scant—where men lead isolated lives out of reach of libraries and learning—they ask advice of the priest or the village schoolmaster, and thus vicariously discharge the duties of citizenship without any real knowledge of the problems before them and without contributing to the solution of those difficulties to which the ever-increasing complexity of our civilization gives rise.
Now if we apply this line of thought to the study of such economic problems as arise in our country from time to time, we find that the same conditions apply. We fancy ourselves immeasurably better off than the uncultured frontiersman who must rely for his information upon the priest or the schoolmaster, but in our dumb submission to the rant of the hustings and the scare of the headlines are we really discharging the functions of good citizenship? Are we not indolent? I can have a lively sympathy for the half-breed in the Canadian woods seeking information as best he may, but for the man in our populous and cultivated communities who is too lazy to turn to our great public libraries for light on the vexed and vexing economic problems of the day, contenting himself with the half-baked opinions of demagogues and quacks—for such a man it is difficult to say a good word. There is hope for the one; the other is the most menacing and discouraging type in our citizenship.