At the outset I began by cautioning the reader not to cry out in alarm over the utterances of newspaper statesmen bent on justifying their existence, and determined to make the punishment fit the crime. Stocks will always be bought and sold, they will pass from hand to hand just as horses are traded and lands are exchanged. The modest dollar, too, will continue to pass from pocket to pocket, having a thousand owners and performing a thousand functions many of which may alarm a timid and unsuspecting lawmaker, but which to you and me may seem natural enough. When you read that a great Congressman is determined to put the Steel corporation into bankruptcy and throw its 250,000 employees out of business, depend upon it he is only trying to justify his job for the benefit of this constituents. When somebody else seeks to mend his fences by the noisy announcement that the Stock Exchange reeks with improper manipulation, that speculation is wrongful, and that the criminal nature of an institution is directly proportionate to its size, remember that the votes of your fellow-citizens put this man in office and that you and they must foot the bill, since it is your money that pays for all these junkets, all these investigations, and all these political excursions. More than that, you must pay your share of the $160,000,000 for pensions, of the $40,000,000 for post-offices, and of the countless millions for rivers and harbors, and these, too, are voted with amiable frugality by the gentlemen who see nightmares in banks, Clearing Houses, and Stock Exchanges. Finally, try to investigate and study all these matters for yourself. Read the men who have spent their lives in the study of economics. Compare the results attained by our great financial institutions with those reached in similar lines abroad. In the particular application of these studies to the New York Stock Exchange, you will find that charges such as we have been considering could be brought against any institution that has stood the test of time and made the mistakes that fallible human beings must make. You will find that if changes and improvements seem to come about slowly it is not because of the unwillingness of the Exchange to remedy these conditions, but because of the gravity and deliberation with which they must be considered in the light of the future as well as the present.