fool!"
is the mental
summary inclosed along with
many a closing-out statement. To the visitor accustomed to regard Wall
Street as a vast faro layout, its very face should be a striking
object-lesson. Emerging from the lofty
and beautiful hallway of the
Empire Building, those stupendous heights of stone and glass
which confront him in solid squares are evidently not the creations of
the baccarat
table and the roulette wheel. The most dignified temples of chance are
designed to
shelter pleasure and frivolity. These huge homes of the corporation and
the bank,
with entrances as sternly embellished as palaces of justice,
are oppressively significant
of business. As one
crosses Broadway and descends to Broad Street, the
impression deepens, stirs, until you realize you are standing
in a place of strength and power, in the very heart of the nation's
financial life. The crowd of curb brokers yelling out quotations before
the Stock Exchange seems merely a casual and ludicrous episode,
and the Stock Exchange itself but a factor in this tremendous
neighborhood. Here is a world force which expresses itself on land and
sea, and in the heaven above; which has built itself an abode that is
the wonder of man; which bids fleets go forth,
transports armies, and commands
in foreign senates; which restrains kings in their wrath; which feeds
the peasant on the
banks of the Gloire, and clothes the coolie toiling in the rice fields
of Honan. You stand there, I say, and recognize
that you are in the presence of the creative
energy of millions of men and machines
building, hauling, planting, laboring, all over the world; and then you
go into your broker's office and hear slim young gentlemen talk of
"playing the market," and you don't wonder the broker is cynical
and care
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