the robbers may reap the
harvest, he speaks of corners as offering "brilliant illustrations of
genius and strategic skill in financial warfare!"

The fact is that the men who are reared in Wall Street, who from their
youth are familiarized with its processes, and who are well set in the
plastic age to consider human life as an auspicious opportunity for
getting possession of something that does not belong to them, are
fatally blunted in their sensibilities; the ethical quality in them is
battered out--or at least battered; they come to regard the human race
as an enormous ranch of sheep to be shorn at the pleasure of the
shearers; they even grow to consider each other as so much mutton to
be butchered and roasted by whoever is able to do it.

I notice with surprise that Mr. Clews in his sketch of Wall Street
dwells not at all upon the benevolent agency of that power during the
Civil War. This is an oversight which I beg leave to supply. There has
never perhaps been an instance in human history in which a great power
has so ardently devoted itself "to the preservation of free
institutions" as did Wall Street in that epoch of mortal agony. Then
it was that Wall Street engaged in the patriotic work, first of
destroying the national credit, then of buying it up at half price,
then of converting it into a bonded debt to be perpetuated for a full
generation, and finally of compelling the people to pay it in a dollar
worth four times as much as the dollar with which it was purchased. It
was a beautiful scheme of devotion and self-sacrifice the like of
which history has never before recorded. It was a speculation which
involved the life of the American Republic. The Union was on trial.
All nerves were strained, and all hearts were torn. The nation was
bleeding at every pore. Every freight-train that came from the front
brought back its loaded boxes of dead. Fathers and mothers gathered at
the station, and each received his own. The rough coffin containing
the body of the patriot boy who had given his life for the flag was
taken by the silent father and mother to its resting-place under the
apple trees. All true men had tearful faces, and a stern resolve in
the heart. And while _this_ was the condition of the nation and the
people, the high-toned Wall Street was speculating on the life of the
Republic. It bought and sold blood. It was a bull on disaster and a
bear on victory. It established bureaus through which to falsify
int