What My Critics will Say 47 



that most men really do produce valuable work 

 essential to the happiness of mankind, there 

 might be some misgiving as to the policy of 

 isolating one's self from the crowd and en- 

 deavoring to get as much enjoyment upon 

 comparatively nothing a year as the millionaire 

 may get. Who does not know that hundreds 

 of the rich men of New York City owe their 

 wealth to gambling, pure and simple, the rest 

 of the country furnishing the victims and the 

 money? Statistics show, for instance, that of 

 all the buying and selling done upon the New 

 York Produce Exchange, ninety-five per cent, 

 represents gambling; five per cent, represents 

 actual buying and selling of grain and produce. 

 In Wall Street it is still worse. These dozens 

 of well-dressed men, the men who own the 

 yachts and the fast horses and the big country 

 places, do no useful work, produce nothing, 

 and if their business could be wiped out of 

 existence to-morrow the world would be no 

 poorer. Under cover of the little legitimate 

 trading or business which has to be done in 

 stocks or bonds, this army of gamblers grow 

 rich upon the passion of human nature to get 



