ll
the "tickers" in ten thousand chambers and "bucketshops" and offices in
the republic. Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans, Chicago,
San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious "three-eighths,"
electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to jabber and
gesticulate and "transact business." It is wonderful.

What induced the beardless young man to make this "investment" in
"three-eighths"--who can tell? Perhaps he had heard, as he came into the
room, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call of
Fives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French blood
was too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that a
norther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppers
had been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had been
observed that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his face
and his hat pulled over his eyes. The young man sold what he did not
have, and the other young man bought what he will never get.

This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has an
element of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen, whence
it is characterized by an expression--"dealing in futures." It is not
gambling, for there are no "chips" used, and there is no roulette-table
in sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of anything else. It
is not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which impartial men preside to
insure honest drawings, and there are no predestined blanks and prizes,
and the man who buys and the man who sells can do something, either in
the newspapers or elsewhere, to affect the worth of the investment,
whereas in a lottery everything depends upon the turn of the blind wheel.
It is not necessary, however, to attempt a defense of the Chamber. It is
one of the recognized ways of becoming important and powerful in this
world. The privilege of the floor--a seat, as it is called--in this
temple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in the
Cabinet. It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day or
lost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all over
the land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation of
the Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident. If an
earthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the
bowels of the earth, with all its nervousness and all its ele