STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 127
Superficial Resemblances.—Speculation and gambling, of
course, sometimes possess superficial resemblances. The motive
for both may alike consist in a rash and unintelligent willingness
to take large risks for large possible profits. A man can,
»f course, lose just as much money in unwise speculation as he
can by “playing the races,” yet it does not follow that a stock
market is a race-course. It is also true that some speculators
use no more intelligence in purchasing or selling securities than
as if they were blindly gambling upon an undeterminable future
event. One worthy citizen is said to have taken a “long position”
on certain speculative securities in a “bear market” because
of the advice of a medium, who claimed to evoke the
spirits of great American financiers. Extraordinarily enough,
he was not inclined to blame the Stock Exchange for his losses
afterwards.
Yet just such episodes as this raise the query why the Exchange
should be visited with righteous wrath because speculators
lose money through unwise ventures, when the similar
lack of intelligence in other speculative lines of business evokes
no such bitterness. A large proportion of all business enterprises
undertaken in this country ultimately result in failure,
and undoubtedly the cause is mainly ignorance and folly on the
part of the management. America, too, has its share of poorly
trained, inefficient business men who speculate with their sav-Ings
and inheritances in poor real estate, impossible retail shops,
and all manner of harebrained and unlikely enterprises every
year, which soon exhaust their funds and leave them bankrupt.
But they have no target later to direct their resentment against,
while the losing speculator in securities can always blame the
Stock Exchange for his own folly.
Gambling Forbidden on the Stock Exchange.—It is one
of the principal services of the Stock Exchange to maintain a
speculative market for speculative securities. But any form of
gambling on the Exchange floor has long been prohibited. Its
Rules (Chapter XIV, Sections 6 and 7) forbid “offers on the
