362 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



that be or the man he is playing with will win, but it is 

 not so with the stock gambler who, from a distance, 

 trades in "the Street." He is sure to come out on the 

 wrong side with unerring accuracy. If he loses then he 

 loses, and that is the end of the matter. When Henry 

 Clay's wife was asked if it did not make her feel badly to 

 have Mr. Clay play poker she said: "Oh, no! Mr. Clay 

 almost always wins." But the man who at long range at- 

 tempts to play with the Board of Trade tiger always 

 meets his Waterloo. 



You ask me about the "ethics of a legislator's buying 

 and selling stocks." The ethics of a legislator's going 

 into speculation of this kind is the same as that which ap- 

 plies to the bank cashier or Sunday-school superintendent 

 who undertakes the same thing. 



You assume that the congressman who speculates in 

 stocks is a designing and wicked person. It would gen- 

 erally be more appropriate to call him ' ' a sucker. ' ' I be- 

 lieve it was Josh Billings who sagely remarked that when 

 a man makes up his mind to be a rascal he had better have 

 a civil service examination of himself to see if he is not 

 better constructed for a fool. The congressional specu- 

 lator in stocks is entitled more to our sympathy than to 

 our condemnation, for he is a man of many sorrows and 

 acquainted with grief. 



There are a few remarkably shrewd, keen-witted men 

 in public office who have by such speculation while in of- 

 fice made fortunes, but they are extremely rare. Nearly 

 every man who has been fortunate in such ventures has 

 graduated in that school before entering either the Senate 

 or the House. Of course it is morally wrong for any mem- 

 ber of Congress to indulge in speculation based upon his 

 knowledge or opinion as to legislation in which he is con- 

 cerned. But the political speculator is almost certain to 

 mistake the financial effect of such enactments. He is a 



