“If it is the intention of the Legislature of this State to stop enterprise in business, then your Committee is undertaking to accomplish that work in the right way, but I think your success would be a public calamity.” I doubt the expediency of either undertaking to regulate enterprise by law or to choke off competition by the law-making power. The result would be woeful stagnation in business. It would crush the motives for commercial activity and depress the creative energies of prosperity. The law of supply and demand is the best regulator. Congress attempted to suppress speculation in gold during the war, and as soon as the act was passed prohibiting such dealings, the premium on gold advanced 100 per cent. This so much terrified the wise statesmen who concocted this sweeping measure of financial reform, that they immediately displayed much more wisdom in hastening to have the bill repealed. The simple reason that such laws will not work in practice is that where there is a will there is generally a way to evade them. This is the case with the very best of such laws that can possibly be framed. Take the usury laws for example. The methods of getting around these are numerous, and there is practically no limit to the rate of interest that can be exacted except the conscience of the lender, which is frequently very elastic. Daniel O’Connell said he could drive a coach and six through any act of Parliament. Jake Sharp was also of opinion that he could run a double-track horse-car railroad through the best act that could be framed by any Albany Legislature. Jake was checked in his career at considerable trouble and expense, but his case illustrated that the rule referred to holds good generally in legislation. The fact, however, that it seldom happens that anybody gets badly hurt in “corners,” except the conspirators themselves, is sufficient protection for the general public, and should set the minds of legislators at rest, if they mean to do legitimate business in their law-making capacity. The conspirators in “corners” are usually left high and dry without any market for their fictitious values, and the “corner” very frequently has the effect of putting the property out of the speculative market for a long time. The fate of Han. & St. Jo. is a warning to those who manipulate “corners.” The stock was seldom quoted for months afterwards. Take the case of Black Friday for example. It was most disastrous to the parties intimately connected with it. It came near proving Gould’s ruin, and he has not got over the moral effect of it yet. The probability is it will be an heirloom in his family, a skeleton in the Gould closet for generations to come. Gould and Black Friday have become synonymous in the minds of many people, and the further from Wall Street the more the distinction becomes confounded.