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: