Napoleon felt, no doubt, that there was something inherently wrong in selling short; even as these lines are written, counsel for a Congressional committee is attempting to make witnesses admit that the practice is “immoral.” But why, where, how is it immoral? It pervades all business; no question of morals or ethics enters into it at all. The man who sells you a motor-car has not got it; he accepts your money and enters into an agreement to deliver the car next spring because he knows or believes that he can make it and have it ready for delivery at that time. Meanwhile he has sold short. A gentleman of my acquaintance has sold thousands of storage-batteries on the same basis, although plans for them have not yet been designed to meet the specifications. At Cape Cod the cranberry-growers sell their crop before it has begun to mature; all over the land contractors and builders are “going short” of the labor and materials which, at some time in the future, they hope to obtain to fulfil the terms of their agreements. Are all these worthy people “immoral”? If it is immoral to _sell_ for a purpose, it is equally immoral to _buy_ for a purpose; in each case the purpose is the hope of a profit. Buying for a profit is approved by every one; why not selling? In both instances you have bought or sold for a difference in price; the _sequence_ of the events in no way involves a question of morals, since there is no ethical difference and no economic difference between buying first and selling last, and selling first and buying last. Moreover, in selling short you do no injury, since you sell to a buyer, at his price, only what he wants and is willing to pay for.[36] All suggestions of impropriety in short selling are grotesque in their absurdity. But suppose, for purposes of argument, that economic errors of some sort were actually involved in this practice. How could it be regulated or controlled? As the governors of the Stock Exchange stated to the Hughes Commission in 1909, short selling is of different descriptions. There is the short sale where the security is held in another country and sold to arrive pending transportation. There is the short sale where an individual sells against securities which he expects to have later, but which are not in deliverable form; and in this connection I call your attention to the recent sale of $50,000,000 of Corporate Stock of the City of New York where deliveries were not made for a period of about three months, and which stock was dealt in enormously, long before it was issued.