21
THE CHICAGO BANKER
July II, 1908]
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY TRUST COMPANY
ST. LOUIS
Capital. Surplus and Profits ::::::	$8,400,000
A General Trust Company "Business Transacted
CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED AND PROMPT ATTENTION TO BUSINESS ASSURED
but financial concentration is good or bad, according to the methods of its administration. That certain men and interests in Wall Street have formed corrupt alliances with political bosses for the purpose of obtaining special privileges and immunity for disobedience of law has been abundantly proven in the past few years, but what part of the country has not been guilty in proportionate degree? The sins of Wall Street have been the sins of the whole nation. But even if Wall Street be considered the chief offender, does its crime call for capital punishment?
Wall Street not only did not start the panic, but it took heroic and effective measures to stop it, and the work of Mr. Morgan and the clearing house loan committee aided by Secretary Cortelyou in coming to the aid of the hard pushed financial institutions was worthy of all praise.
I shall say something later about “the gambling hell” charg־e, but will remark as appropriate in this connection that but for Wall Street’s organized stock market, including its system of short selling, the panic would have produced a complete business collapse from which it would have taken the whole country years to recover.
It is the wealth and power of Wall Street that make it feared. It is the richest district per square foot of the Western Hemisphere. Nowhere else in all the country does non-mineral land possess such value as exists in Wall Street. A lot on the corner of Wall and Broadway sold not long ago for $750 per square foot. The corner of Wall and Broad streets, where J. Pierpont Morgan has his banking house, is probably the most valuable plot of ground in the country. Some idea may be gathered of the richness of this district from the fact that the assessed valuation of Wall Street from Broadway to the East River amounts to $55,-995,000, while the total assessed value of the real estate in the entire financial district, including Wall Street, amounts to more than $200,-000,000. The latter total is larger than the real estate values of any one of fourteen different states, and it is greater than the valuation of the real estate in all but twelve cities of the United States.
Plere are concentrated the big banks and most powerful trust companies and famous international banking houses, the great exchanges, and the financial headquarters of all the richest corporations of the land.
Of the total wealth of the country, estimated at $115,000,000,000, about $35,000,000,000 is represented by corporate securities, of which $20,000,000,000 are admitted to dealings on the New York Stock Exchange, and probably $5,000,000,000 more are traded in outside of that market. In thirty-two years the total value
American finance, but not as a participant. My position, as a Wall Street editor, is rather that of war correspondent who, note book in hand, records the progress of events. In thus speaking for Wall Street I do not wish to be understood as assailing in any degree the motives of the great men whom I have quoted as passing judgment upon Wall Street.
Moreover, in order that I may speak with greater freedom, permit me to say that I am in full and hearty sympathy with the great Roosevelt movement for corporation publicity, for the reform of railroad abuses, and for the establishment of higher standards in the trusteeship of other people’s money. I would rather lose the power of speech than to stand here as the defender of wrong, the apologist of cruelty, or as the advocate of deceit and wicked manipulation. But I draw a broad line of demarkation between the uses of Wall Street and its abuses; and that is something which these eminent critics of Wall Street do not do. They are so impressed with the enormity of the abuses that they cannot see the beneficent uses; and in order to get rid of the abuses, they propose remedies which would destroy the system and deprive the country of the benefit of a great international money market.
Let us sum up briefly the charges brought against Wall Street. It is alleged:
1.	That Wall Street is rich.
2.	That the financial concentration centered there is of an especially dangerous and wicked type.
3.	That it had attempted to “boss” the country, and that in order to be able to do so, it has formed corrupt alliances with political bosses and political machines.
4.	That it is responsible for gross abuses in company promotion, in over-capitalization and corporation management.
5.	That it takes too large a proportion of the profits of industry, its gains being altogether greater than the value of its services.
6.	That with malice and greed it started the panic.
7.	That its speculative market is a gambling hell.
8.	That it sells other people’s property short.
Now it will be impossible for me to deal at
any great length with more than two or three of these charges. That Wall Street is rich, I suppose must be admitted, and in these days “being rich” is regarded by a good many as little less than a crime. That Wall Street represents a huge financial concentration is true,
After a very clever introduction, Sereno S. Pratt, the able editor of the Wall Street Journal, told the South Dakota bankers his views of the relations between Wall Street and the country. He said in part:
Last January, the President of the United States, in a special message to Congress, discussed the advisability of laws for the reformation of the stock market. He had previously described the most famous member of the New York Stock Exchange as “an undesirable citizen.”
Mr. Bryan, who seems to regard Wall Street as “the enemy’s country,” immediately followed this message with an address in New York in which he declared that 99 per cent of the transactions of the stock exchange were illegitimate gambling, that Wall Street has created more embezzlers than “Fagan’s school graduated thieves,” and that “Monte Carlo is an innocent pleasure resort in comparison with the American financial center.”
Gov. Haskell, of Oklahoma, in an address replying to an article of my own in The Wall Street Journal, asserted that the stock market absorbs capital, inspires gambling, cripples legitimate commerce, and that Wall Street is “the home of spurious goods and false pretenses.”
Senator La Follette, in his recent long speech in the Senate, went so far as to charge Wall Street with having engaged in a conspiracy to bring about the recent panic. Just think for a moment of the enormity of such a charge. Can you really conceive of Wall Street, whatever may be its selfishness and greed, as actually conspiring to bring about a panic involving the ruin of thousands, the closing of factories, the throwing of hundreds of thousands of workmen out of employment, and the starving of women and children? Such a charge as that is monstrous.
Yet A. O. Crozier, in a recent address before a legislative committee, asserted that Wall Street is “the most colossal, crooked, merciless and dangerous institution in all history.”
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that one-half of the speeches delivered during the past session of Congress contained some uncomplimentary allusion to Wall Street. Apparently it is the most unpopular place in the country.
Now, I have come, upon the invitation of your president, all the way from this “den of thieves” to Deadwood, to attempt to present to you a truer picture of Wall Street than the words which I have quoted. It may be that in one respect I am well fitted to perform this service. for while I am in Wall Street, and acquainted with Wall Street, I am not of Wall Street. I am, indeed, upon the firing line of