great price. When she died, you all gathered
lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest,
the Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin
with japonicas; and the poor people stood at the end
of the alley, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing
bitterly; and the man of the world said, with Solomon,
“Her price was above rubies;” and Jesus,
as unto the maiden in Judea, commanded: “I
SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE!”
[NOTE.—This chapter, though largely devoted
to “Oil,” is to be construed as reaching
any other “Kite” that the stock gambler
flies—any other scheme which his unprincipled
ideas of right and wrong will permit him to work to
his own gain and others’ loss. The oil
mania was only a more popular or attractive vice
of the stock-boards, which is reproduced, in spirit
and motive, almost every month of the year.]
At my entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore
the indiscriminate terms of condemnation employed
by many well-meaning persons in regard to stock operations.
The business of the stock-broker is just as legitimate
and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries,
or hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy
a Christian at the Board of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting.
The broker is, in the sight of God, as much entitled
to his commissions as any hard-working mechanic is
entitled to his day’s wages. Any man has
as much right to make money by the going up of stocks
as by the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The
inevitable board-book that the operator carries in
his hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant’s
ledger. It is the work of the brokers to facilitate
business; to make transfer of investment; to watch
and report the tides of business; to assist the merchant
in lawful enterprises.
Because there are men in this department of business,
sharp, deceitful, and totally iniquitous, you have
no right to denounce the entire class. Importers,
shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not want to be held responsible
for the moral deficits of their comrades in business.
Neither have you a right to excoriate those who are
conscientiously operating through the channels spoken
of. If they take a risk, so do all business men.
The merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard
takes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars;
it may fall to four dollars. If a man, by straightforward
operations in stocks, meets with disaster and fails,
he deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold spices
or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck
down bankrupt.
We have no right to impose restrictions upon this
class of men that we impose upon no other. What
right have you to denounce the operation “buyer—ten
days” or “buyer—twenty days,”
when you take a house, “buyer—three
hundred and sixty-five days?” Perhaps the entire
payment is to be made at the end of a year, when you
do not know but that, by that time, you will be penniless.
