44 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



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 something 

 without work. Every little town in the country 

 sends its money to the great city to be matched 

 against the money from somewhere else. These 

 precious brokers are the bankers in the game. 

 To pretend that the business is a whit better 

 than gambling with dice and cards has always 

 seemed to me hypocrisy ; the man who deals 



