“Our politicians, however, are legislating for a Wall Street of twenty years ago. The stock market is not controlled by large speculators creating deceptive prices by manipulative orders. That kind of business is passing away, and it may be said that another kind, that of the purely gambling accounts carried on the lightest of margins, has practically gone, and is not likely to return. The few houses whose business is still of this character are dying of dry-rot; while the active houses who are doing the real business of the stock market report their speculative accounts so broadly margined as to be of a semi-investment character. “What is still more satisfactory is the wide diffusion in the ownership of industrial and railroad stocks. This is not new. The Illinois Central’s great strength for forty years was in the small stockholder, who made his voice heard to some purpose when “strike” legislation developed in his State legislature or in Congress. But the ever-widening character of the investment area, the recognition of the convenience and convertibility of Stock Exchange securities, safeguarded by sound management and full publicity, is a growth of the most hopeful character. It indicates a force of enlightened conservatism of the greatest value to the country.”--The _Wall Street Journal_, October 22, 1912. [57] It is truthfully declared by Courtois, in his _Traité des Opérations de Bourse et de Change_, that a fictitious movement, even on the part of the most powerful operators, cannot overcome the natural tendencies of values, and that the most that can be accomplished is sometimes to hasten or retard slightly the certain effect of a foreseen event. “Wall Street and the Country,” by Charles A. Conant, p. 88, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1904. [58] The _Wall Street Journal_, December 7, 1912. [59] The distinction between “panics,” “crises,” and “depressions,” are clearly stated in the opening chapter of “Financial Crises and Periods of Industrial and Commercial Depression,” by Theodore E. Burton, D. Appleton & Co., N. Y., 1902. In the following pages, I use the terms as they are commonly applied in Wall Street, although this application is not always governed by sound etymology. Thus in Wall Street we speak of “the panic of 1907,” meaning broadly the events of that entire year. Strictly speaking a “panic” is the brief period of a day or an hour of unreasoning fear, brought about by the “crisis” of a money scarcity which preceded it. The period of commercial and financial suffering, which continues after the panic and the crisis have passed, is the “depression.” [60] “Des Crises Commerciales,” Clément Juglar, Paris, 1889, pp. 44–5. [61] “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XXXV, No. 3, May, 1910, p. 13. [62] “Financial Crises and Periods of Industrial and Commercial Depression,” Theodore E. Burton, New York, 1902, p. 234.