ufficient to pay
the expense of office rent and clerk hire. This conclusion takes it
for granted that these profits should be equally divided among the
membership. This is not a reasonable supposition. Many of the members
are such only in name, and rarely go on the floor. Others live during
most of the time on their accumulations, and come into the market to
buy or sell only when prices are abnormally low or high. The
comparatively small busy portion manage somehow to keep fairly active,
and are cheerfully looking forward to better times, through a vista
from which the cloud of a change of the monetary standard has already
passed away, and into which the genius of enterprise beckons them to
enter.

III.

While in many respects the future is a sealed book, yet there is such
a thing in the economy of nature as an absolutely accurate prevision
of events, such as eclipses of the sun and moon, and conjunctions of
the planets, and a relatively correct prevision of events depending
upon the growth of enlightened communities. Since the incorporation of
the Bank of New York, at the corner of Wall and Williams Streets, the
banking capital of New York has increased more than sixtyfold, of
which more than one-half is held and used in and around Wall Street,
and the aggregation of deposited and loanable capital has grown from a
few millions to over half a billion. If this has been the result
during one century, what will take place in the same direction during
the next century? The ratio of increase will not be kept up. A
thousand dollars may be doubled in a day, but no such ratio as a
hundred per cent a day can be predicated of a million. And yet it is
certain that, under proper management, the million will go on
increasing; and in the same manner will our half-billion increase by
its own earning power, and by contributions from all parts of the
Union. The development of the United States in the direction of
population, agriculture, manufactures, and mines is so enormous and so
steady that this nation will at some not distant period become the
most opulent of all the nations of the planet, unless unforeseen and
improbable political events happen by which our great commonwealth
shall be disrupted or its financial stability overturned. Under a
normal condition of things the capital of the citizens of the Union
will continually increase, and the banks of the city of New York will
be the depositary of larger and larger reserves of