Another notorious pastime, that seems to be well known to every one but the officers of the courts, consists in the practice of fraudulent bankrupts in producing in court a mass of worthless securities as evidence that the bankrupt’s money has been “legitimately” lost in speculation. The certificates thus exhibited are beautifully engraved memorials of defunct mining concerns, sold at so much a pound by well-known dealers. It is related that a person who wished to keep ever before his eyes a lesson and a warning once papered the walls of his house with a wagon-load of this junk, which he was able to purchase at less than the price of ordinary wall paper. Any scamp who intends to “lie down” on an unprofitable contract can buy $1,000,000 nominal of the stuff at waste-paper rates. He is assured of the sympathy of his family and friends, and, if it does not occur to the lawyers to inquire who his brokers were, and when, where, and how these purchases were made, he stands a good chance of going the way of all undetected swindlers, notwithstanding the fact that documentary evidence of his purchases, if there were any, is always available. In this way another indictment is framed against Wall Street in the minds of thoughtless people. They seem to ignore the obviously improbable nature of the story, preferring rather to make Wall Street the scapegoat, and by “Wall Street,” in the majority of cases, they mean the Stock Exchange, yet the Stock Exchange had no more to do with it than Trinity Church, at one end of Wall Street, has to do with a stevedore’s crap-game at the other end. So far as concerns the case of the crooked bank clerk, it is perfectly well known, or at least it should be, that no member of the New York Stock Exchange is permitted under its rules to have any speculative or investment relations whatever with employees of banks or trust companies, or of other brokerage houses. The Exchange authorities enforce this rule to the letter. Disgrace and expulsion faces the man who would attempt it. More than that, members are unusually careful in investigating customers’ accounts for reasons involving their own safety in actions that may be brought in the courts; so rigorously is this care exercised that accounts are repeatedly refused where the bona fides of the customers are not fully understood by at least one of the firm’s partners.