DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 82, 28 June 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE WALL STREET BOGEY (Copyright, 1927. J M R JASON WESTERFIELD, director of publicity of the New York Stock Exchange, in a recent address said: “We pity primitive people who personalise the destructive elements of nature, and yet this anthropomorphic tendency has been shown by so-called civilised men of to-day who believe that the ‘demons of Wall Street’ are plotting day and night to rob the poor and destroy the nation.’’ It is quite the style and somewhat the popular thing to abuse Wall Street, to claim that it is some kind of a bogey man that is constantly plotting against the welfare of the people. To talk of criminal wealth and malefactors of great wealth is quite the style. Unfortunately there have been examples of men of great wealth who have not done right, hut where there is one rich man who has broken the laws there are probably 20 poor men who have done the same thing. , A man can accumulate wealth in this country, as a rule, only by observing che laws: in fact he becomes wealthy because he does observe the laws. He adjusts himself to the conditions of society. He knows how to play the game because he is always going along with the stream. He has no fanatical theories that involve him in useless antagonism to the views of his fellow men. Wall Street is nothing but a market and the greatest market in the world for the exchange of securities. There money is handled in great lumps. A man’s reputation for truth and honesty is nowhere at a greater premium. Men constantly risk their fortunes upon the word or even the nod of their competitors and they are rarely betrayed. The standard of morality among stock brokers from a commercial point of view is as high as in other quarters. It is necessary for the country to have some market for the exchange and sale of its securities. Wall Street was not imposed upon the country by the Government, but has grown up naturally. It exists to meet a real want. It answers the purposes for which it has grown admirably and the standard of truth and honesty there is as good as it is in other sections of the country. There are crooked piano dealers, crooked automobile salesmen and crooked farmers and I suppose there will always be crooked brokers. But they speedily eliminate themselves. The only way to continue to do business successfully is to do it honestly. Some object to Wall Street because its inhabitants are called cold-blooded and heartless. The same objection is made to bankers generally. But when you put your money in a bank you want it taken care of by a man who is not a sentimentalist, but who is extremely practical, and you usually select as custodian lor your accounts the cold-bloded man and not the warm-hearted mixer.