the art and mystery of selling
short had not been brought into practice, and when the bubbles
collapsed there were universal losers and no direct winners.

During the latter half of this century there have been periods in the
history of Wall Street when the prices of railway and industrial
shares have been forced enormously above the standard of actual
values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in
exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the
short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted
criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that
is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the
public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he
pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic
humbug, strewing the highway with its remains, we cannot praise his
work too highly.

II.

The present condition of Wall Street is one of lassitude and
expectancy. The great banks have an abundance, perhaps a
superabundance, of money, their own and their depositors, which they
are only too glad to lend on solid and readily salable collateral at
low rates of interest, approximating the prevalent rates in London and
Paris, where similar accumulations of idle capital exist. A large part
of this money is deposited with them by local banks in all parts of
the country, which recognize New York City as the financial centre of
the Union, and are content with interest of from one to two per cent
upon the funds which they are unwilling or unable to use safely at
home. The stock exchange is also in a condition of quietude. The
public are neither buying nor selling stocks in any large amount.

This state of things is the resultant of well-known facts. Numerous
over-capitalized and badly managed railways have gone into bankruptcy,
and either are in the hands of receivers or have emerged from such
guardianship, and are painfully toiling along on the road to
prosperity on the twin crutches of assessments upon stockholders and
the withholding of dividends from the same long-suffering and patient
class.

The transactions at the stock exchange at present average about two
hundred thousand shares a day, exclusive of bonds, government, State,
and railway; and a certain class of observers who like to subject
circumstances to a minute analysis inform the public that the daily
profits of the members of the exchange are about s