78 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



"Yes." 



"Well, I think just the opposite." 



It is the fashion for the public to condemn the 

 Stock Exchange and lay the blame of its losses 

 on the members thereof, but the evil lies back of 

 the Exchange. Its members will measure up 

 well with the public that deals with them. Com- 

 missions are large and the interest account a mine 

 in Stock Exchange business, but carrying cus- 

 tomers beyond their margins makes horrible holes 

 in the profits, for the advances never come back. 

 In my own experience of hundreds of such cases 

 I can count on the fingers of one hand the cus- 

 tomers who ever made good. These losses were 

 not of trifling sums, for I could name three, each 

 of which ran into six figures, and the total far ex- 

 ceeds all the commissions I ever received. 



A broker's office should be run by machinery, 

 with accounts kept by tabulators and an automatic 

 device for cutting them off when margins run out, 

 as relentlessly as Atropos snips the thread of hu- 

 man life, which to customers seems about the same 

 thing. Few members of the Exchange have at- 



