The great concern called Wall Street is such an organized power in society. It exists as a fact in our American system, and would fain conciliate the favor of the public. Wall Street has become one of the most conspicuous features in our national life. Knowing that it is challenged by public opinion--knowing indeed that it is already under the ban and condemnation of the American people--it now seeks, after the manner of its kind, to save itself alive. It would go further than mere salvation; it would make mankind believe that it is a reputable part of the universal swim. Aye more; it seeks to ingratiate itself, sometimes by force and sometimes by gentle craft and stratagem, into the good graces of that civilization which it has so mortally offended. To this end Wall Street strives to justify itself in periodical and general literature. No other power in human society to so great a degree and in so subtle a manner exploits its own virtues. Taking advantage of the well-known carelessness of American readers, and knowing full well how easily they are duped--how easily they are cozened out of their senses and led into false beliefs with mere plausibilities and sophisms--this imperial and far-reaching Wall Street, this elephantine fox of the world, takes possession of American journalism--owns it, controls it. It seizes and subsidizes the metropolitan press. It purchases newspapers and magazines by the score. It establishes bureaus; it buys every purchasable pen, from the pen of the gray philosopher to the pen of the snake editor. It overawes every timid brain, from the brain of the senator to the brain of the tramp. What it cannot purchase it terrorizes; and the small residue which it cannot terrorize it seeks to cajole: all this to the end that its dominion may be universal and everlasting. In this work of gaining possession of public opinion and perverting that opinion to its own uses Wall Street employs all methods and uses all expedients. Wall Street deliberately marks its game; and we have to confess that the game generally falls at the first fire. We have heard, however, of a single case of a brave man, now dead, who, when offered ten thousand dollars for his voice against his conviction and his opinion against his soul, in the matter of electing President of the United States the man who was the candidate of Wall Street, told the subtle committee to make an immediate and expeditious visit to the bottom of the old theology.