CHAPTER V.

PERSONAL HONOR OF WALL STREET MEN.

BREACH OF TRUST RARE AMONG WALL STREET MEN.—THE ENGLISH CLERGYMAN’S

NOTION OF TALMAGE’S TIRADES AGAINST WALL STREET.—ADVENTUROUS THIEVES

HAVE NO SYMPATHIZERS AMONG WALL STREET OPERATORS.—EARLY TRAINING

NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS IN SPECULATION.—FERDINAND WARD’S EVIL

GENIUS.—A GREAT BUSINESS CAN ONLY BE BUILT UP ON HONEST

PRINCIPLES.—GREAT GENERALS MAKE POOR FINANCIERS, THROUGH WANT OF

EARLY TRAINING.—PRACTICAL BUSINESS IS THE BEST COLLEGE.

There is no place in the world where people are trusted so much on faith

as they are in Wall Street; not even in the Church.

The business is one of mutual confidence, and each day there are

numerous opportunities for men to secure many millions of dollars of

other people’s money and take themselves safely off to that Paradise of

defaulters and absconders over the Border. Yet instances of this nature

are comparatively rare when we consider the large number of transactions

and the immense amount of money handled in Wall Street.

The men of Wall Street have, therefore, become world-renowned for

straightforward dealing, and have thus obtained the first position as

leading spirits in the speculative affairs not only of their own

country, but of the entire world. Wherever the speculative spirit of the

age has obtained a foothold, there Wall Street is a household word, and

Wall Street men are held in the highest esteem. It has become a term

familiar to the ears of those even who know nothing about the business

which has made its name almost universal.

“What is that Wall Street?” said an English curate to a friend of mine

who recently visited Liverpool. “What a queer place,” he continued, “for

Mr. Talmage to have his Tabernacle.”

The English divine, evidently only having “caught on” to isolated

sketches of the Brooklyn preacher’s calumnious invectives, thought they

were actually delivered among the bulls and bears, and that Talmage had

the boldness to beard these ferocious animals in their den.

It is true the honor of Wall Street is sometimes slightly tarnished,

especially in the eyes of those who reside at a great distance, owing to

the occasional delinquencies of dishonorable men, who consider Wall

Street men and Wall Street money fair game for swindling operations.

These are for the most part outsiders, who pounce upon the Street as

their illegitimate prey, after probably making a show of doing business

there.

There is no place, of course, where confidence men have the opportunity

of reaping such a rich harvest when they can succeed in establishing the

confidential relations that help them to secure their swag. But Wall

Street proper is not any more responsible for such men than the Church,

whose sacred precincts are used and abused by the same social pariahs in

a similar manner. The Street is the victim of these adventurers, and has

no more to do with nurturing and aiding them than the Church has.

What should be said of a financier who would have the temerity to assert

that the Church was an asylum for swindlers, and that thence they issued

forth to commit their lawless depredations on society? He would be

tabooed by all intelligent people. Yet there would be about as much

truth in such a statement as in most of the eloquent anathemas and

objurations launched from the pulpit every Sunday against Wall Street.

There is no place on this earth where adventurous thieves have fewer

sympathizers than in Wall Street, except perhaps in Pinkerton’s and

Byrnes’ detective bureaux.

There is another popular delusion with regard to those who don’t succeed

in Wall Street. Their failure is frequently attributed to sharp practice

on the part of the old habitues of the Street. People forget that the

business of speculation requires special training, and every fool who

has got a few hundred dollars cannot begin to deal in stocks and make a

fortune. The men who don’t succeed are usually those who have spent

their early life elsewhere, and whose habits have been formed in other

grooves of thought.

The business of Wall Street requires long and close training in

financial affairs, so that the mind may attain a flexible facility with

the various ins and outs of speculative methods. If this training is

from youth upward, all the better. It is among this class that many of

our most successful men are to be found, though there are some eminent

examples of success among those who began late in life. It will be

found, however, that the latter must have a special genius for the

business, and genius, of course, discounts all the usual conditions and

auxiliaries; but among ordinary intellects early training is generally

indispensable to financial success.

It seldom happens, moreover, that the early trained man from youth up

does any great wrong.

Ferdinand Ward may seem an exception to this rule, but he had a born

genius for evil, and though he had all the early advantages of Timothy

and Samuel the Prophet, with a higher civilization thrown in, so utterly

incorrigible was his nature that nothing but prison walls and iron bars

could prescribe bounds to his rascality. He is an extraordinary

exception, a genius of the other extreme, against whose subtle

operations society must always be on its guard; but he is only one of

the dangerous exceptions that prove the rule for which I am contending,

the rule that early training in finance more, perhaps, than in any other

field of human energy, is the great desideratum.

If such a man is unsuccessful, dishonor seldom accompanies his

misfortunes. He may pass through the whole catalogue of financial

disasters and their natural results. He may fall to the gutter through

over-indulgence in liquor and the despair attendant on a run of bad lack

or unfortunate connection with wicked partners, but he is still capable

of rising from the very ashes of his former self. He will never stoop to

swindle, no matter how low the rest of his moral condition may be

brought.

No great business can be built up except upon honest and moral

principles. It may flourish for a time, but it will topple down

eventually. The very magnitude to which the business of Wall Street has

grown is a living proof of its moral stamina. It is impossible, in the

social and moral nature of things, to unite a large number of men,

representing important material interests, except on principles of

equity and fair dealing. A conspiracy to cheat must always be confined

to a small number.

The most successful men of Wall Street, to my own personal knowledge,

are those who came to the Street young and have “gone through the mill,”

so to speak; those who have received severe training, who have had some

sledgehammer blows applied to their heads to temper them, like the

conversion of iron into steel.

These are some of the prerequisites of a successful financial career.

One of the most common delusions incident to human nature in every walk

of life is that of a man who has been successful in one thing imagining

he can succeed in anything and everything he attempts. In general,

overweening conceit of this kind can be cured by simple experiments that

bring men to a humiliating sense of their mortal condition and limited

capacity. When the experiment is tried in Wall Street, however, to these

healthy admonitions are frequently added irreparable disaster and

overwhelming disgrace.

I shall note a few examples within the memory of newspaper readers still

living. The brief panic of 1884 brought several instances of this

character to the surface. Some of them had fought our battles for

national existence and preserved the Union when this achievement seemed

almost hopeless. Their fame as generals was as extensive as history

itself. They had planned and executed projects with success on which the

destiny of a great nation, and perhaps the destiny of other nations, had

impended, yet when they attempted to manage banks, railroads and

financial operations they became hopelessly entangled.

The great captain of the Union’s salvation was as helpless as a babe

when Ferdinand Ward and James D. Fish moved upon his works. The eye that

took in the whole situation at a glance at Vicksburg, Richmond and

Appomatox was totally unable to penetrate the insidious and speculative

designs of the “Young Napoleon of finance.”

General Grant was a victim, not so much to the sincere, veracious and

unsuspecting attributes which were so largely predominant in that great

man, as to his want of early training in financial business affairs, and

to the fact that he was unable to appreciate its necessity in dealing

with sharp business men of loose morals. Generals Winslow and Porter

fell into a similar error of judgment in the West Shore Railroad matter.

Their mistake came near being a serious blow to the railroad interests

of this country. General Wilson, of the New York and New England, and

General Gordon were similarly unfortunate. The common mistake committed

by these worthy men, to whom the country owes an inestimable debt of

gratitude, was the chief cause of the “general demoralization,” to which

Treasurer Jordan facetiously but indignantly alluded when denouncing

railroad methods, and which from time to time has played sad havoc with

some of the best securities in the country.

Therefore, I say to all who have sons destined for a business career,

let your cherished offspring have the advantage of early practical

training in the particular line of business for which you may consider

them best adapted, and do so, even to the partial neglect of their

school and college education. Practical business is the best school and

college in which they can possibly graduate. I shall attempt to make

this point clearer in another chapter.

[Illustration:

SALMON P. CHASE,

Secretary of the U. S. Treasury during the war period.

]

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