a financial war.

Each has its general, recognized leader as well as a dozen lesser ones,
who organize pools and cliques, manipulate news, issue statements that
are pure fiction, pay for items in the press that are fairy tales,
gather their moneyed forces into aggregation for practical robbery of
others, and bend all energies of brain, experience, and knowledge of
conditions to one focal point, and that either to depress or enhance the
value of securities. Each main army has its general method, controls its
banks, pays enormous tolls to telegraph companies, fixes rates of
interest at will, pays for and colors the daily utterances of its own
newspapers, and buys truth and falsehood with equal readiness at so much
per line.

This describes the two parties generally; yet the men who constitute
them are daily changing, and out of a thousand who may be among the
bears to-day, half might be found with the bulls a week hence. Some may
be on both sides at once, pushing one stock up and another down, a
kaleidoscopic jumble of half insane human beings, whose statements as to
value, conditions, and their own intentions bear no relation to the
truth and are not expected to do so. It is a contest of cunning, a war
of falsehood, a battle of deception. And those who fall by the wayside
excite no pity, receive no consideration, and if they rise not by their
own exertion, they are kicked out of the way.

Professionally speaking, lawyers have been called legal liars, but
compared to stock manipulators they are walking examples of truth and
veracity. A lawyer may lie and can if necessary, but a stock operator
lies all the time; from sheer force of habit. A lawyer might lie to
judge, jury, or his own client, but there is some chance that he may
tell the truth to a brother lawyer; while stock brokers will lie to each
other on all occasions, and if necessary swear to it.

And this is business in Wall Street!

A few other great cities have their lesser Wall streets, and where
Weston & Hill, like a deadly upas tree, flourished for a time, a mimic
Wall Street existed. It had its clique of bulls and bears, its _Market
News_, its leaders, large and small, its daily contest of lies and money
power, and though Weston & Hill were not among its members, their
broker, Simmons, was--an active and unscrupulous mouthpiece, ready to
fleece all fellow-brokers, or the firm he acted for, if necessary. He
had bought or sold Rockhaven stock, as its prime