."

II. THE TRUE INWARDNESS OF WALL STREET.

BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH.

The organized powers of society are always anxious to conciliate
public favor. They know that they exist by sufferance--by sufferance
of a mightier than themselves. In proportion as they know themselves
to be aggressors and spoliators their anxiety increases. Every abusive
power in the world is thus driven to adopt schemes and devices--some
dangerous and some merely ludicrous--to keep a footing at that silent
bar of opinion before which all wrong must, sooner or later, quail and
slink away.

The great concern called Wall Street is such an organized power in
society. It exists as a fact in our American system, and would fain
conciliate the favor of the public. Wall Street has become one of the
most conspicuous features in our national life. Knowing that it is
challenged by public opinion--knowing indeed that it is already under
the ban and condemnation of the American people--it now seeks, after
the manner of its kind, to save itself alive. It would go further than
mere salvation; it would make mankind believe that it is a reputable
part of the universal swim. Aye more; it seeks to ingratiate itself,
sometimes by force and sometimes by gentle craft and stratagem, into
the good graces of that civilization which it has so mortally
offended.

To this end Wall Street strives to justify itself in periodical and
general literature. No other power in human society to so great a
degree and in so subtle a manner exploits its own virtues. Taking
advantage of the well-known carelessness of American readers, and
knowing full well how easily they are duped--how easily they are
cozened out of their senses and led into false beliefs with mere
plausibilities and sophisms--this imperial and far-reaching Wall
Street, this elephantine fox of the world, takes possession of
American journalism--owns it, controls it. It seizes and subsidizes
the metropolitan press. It purchases newspapers and magazines by the
score. It establishes bureaus; it buys every purchasable pen, from the
pen of the gray philosopher to the pen of the snake editor. It
overawes every timid brain, from the brain of the senator to the
brain of the tramp. What it cannot purchase it terrorizes; and the
small residue which it cannot terrorize it seeks to cajole: all this
to the end that its dominion may be universal and everlasting.

In this work of gaining possession of public opinion and perv