CORPORATE FACTORS IN PROGRESS 383 



unions. Morganeers — trade unionists — and single handed 

 president; that is how the triangular duel stands. It is a far 

 more portentous struggle than that of McKinleyism and 

 Bryanism, which shook the country to its center. It will be 

 a more critical one for the millionaires. In the McKinley 

 campaign they had the workingmen to a large extent on their 

 side, but in the next struggle every trades union will be arrayed 

 against them. Every labor war, great or small, now going 

 on will leave its mark on the succeeding elections. 



But what can be wrong with Wall street when a score of 

 men, self made all of them, can in a few years raise them- 

 selves to such a pinnacle of wealth and power as to be able 

 to do not only anything they please, but when and how they 

 please? All ordinary laws and principles of finance have 

 been swept away before them. They claim the right to con- 

 vert stock into bonds and bonds into stock at their own con- 

 venience. They capitalize and recapitalize the creatures of 

 their own creation as the whim seizes them. They split or 

 splice securities, organize or disorganize them, bull or bear 

 them, talk them up or talk them down "to suit their books," 

 as the saying is. And these things they do not by hundreds 

 or thousands but by millions. 



In any case Wall street transactions would be large com- 

 pared with those of any European stock market because it 

 has so much more to deal in. But that only renders it the 

 more surprising that a small group of men should have got 

 control of markets so extensive that the very idea of manipu- 

 lating them should seem prima facie absurd. The stock 

 market, which from its huge size and the great variety of 

 securities it deals in might have been thought safest from 

 faking, has been captured hand and foot by a band of finan- 

 cial fakers. There must be something in Wall street itself 

 or in the financial system it represents to have made such a 

 paradox possible. This is the problem which of all others 

 in the economic life of the United States most urgently de- 

 mands solution. It cannot be pretended that such a state of 

 affairs is safe or healthy for the commonwealth. It cannot 

 be expected to continue long without provoking resistance 

 and possible violence. Hence the duty that is laid on serious 



