The lawyers made many mistakes a century and a half ago when the code and its practice were imperfectly understood in this country; so it was with the early history of banking; and so in our time Wall Street and the Stock Exchange have made the mistakes which any gradually developing form of enterprise must make. But these mistakes are dead or dying, and, in their place, no doubt, there will come a better understanding all around. When that day dawns the thoughtful American will realize that the particular rôle which the Stock Exchange plays in promoting all forms of commercial endeavor is a boon such as no country in the history of earlier days ever enjoyed. He will contemplate his country’s progress with pride; he will rejoice in its capacity to outstrip other countries; he will acclaim its advancement toward the proud position now held by England, the banker and the clearing-house of the world. And he will learn--this thoughtful citizen--that material achievements like these cannot be attained without a market for capital and a market for securities.[15] CHAPTER II THE USES AND ABUSES OF SPECULATION Somewhere in each one of us lurks Stevenson’s spirit of “divine unrest,” the parent of speculation. To-day, as in wise old Greece in the morning of the world, philosophers sit under every tree, speculating upon the phenomena of the universe, and upon the practical application of them to the needs of humanity. Thus Archimedes came to know of things that we now call Copernican, seventeen centuries before Copernicus was born; thus Columbus and his argosy sailed into the great unknown, speculating upon an irrational and even shocking exploit; thus Pasteur saved to France through the meditations of his speculative mind a sum greater than the cost of the Prussian war and the colossal indemnity that followed it. And so the “divine unrest” goes on and on, impelling men to speculations and explorations of the physical world and of the world that lies beyond our primitive senses, with here and there a high achievement, and now and then a miserable failure, but always on and on. The hypothesis of the spectacled professor blossoms into a boon; the dream of the inventor becomes a benefaction; the forlorn hope of the explorer points the way to wealth. Things that were speculations yesterday become realities to-day. To-morrow?--nobody knows. In a free field, not bounded by formulæ nor restricted by law of God or man, with money to encourage it and enterprise to spur it on, what may come from the speculations of the future passes understanding.