STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 141 
Professional men also are frequent if not universal speculators. 
The lawyer and the doctor who spend money (sometimes bor- 
rowed) to obtain their technical training, with the hope of 
later recovering it from future earnings, are speculators of the 
purest dye. Even the grim old New England adage, “There’s 
nothing sure but death and taxes,” is belied by the insurance 
companies and the tax experts, two highly speculative pursuits. 
Everywhere in the world that inevitable business risks have 
arisen, some speculator has been forced to assume them, either 
of necessity, or voluntarily in the hope of a large possible profit. 
These risks can no more be abolished by legislative fiat than 
the tides can be halted. They are inherent in the nature of 
things. And thus modern corporations pass on their risks to 
their share certificates and to the individuals who own them. 
With the augmentation of the volume of business and the 
processes of specialization rising to sustain it, a special class 
of speculators has been created who make it their business to 
assume the risks of enterprise for a possible profit, by buying 
and selling corporate shares. For the same reason, organized 
markets have sprung up for securities, where this necessary 
and inevitable traffic in the risks of business by speculators can 
be conducted in the fairest, most efficient, and least hazardous 
manner. 
Antiquity of Speculation.—Speculation is an immemorial 
handmaiden and companion of trade. Every schoolboy has 
read how, in the dawn of history, Joseph anticipated the “cycle 
theory” of prices by his dream of seven fat and seven lean 
years, and by accumulating and “cornering” wheat, prospered 
exceedingly in the land of ‘Mizraim, in the shadow of the 
recently erected Pyramids. The more curious student of his- 
tory may likewise have run upon the story of the ancient Greek 
philosopher, Thales, who, upon being jeered at by the king 
2 “Thales, being a man of moderate means, worked his corner by securing options 
on the use of the presses at the next harvest season.” (H. C. Emery, Speculation on 
the Stock and Produce Exchanges of the United States, p. 33). 
The original citation of Thales’ corner can be found in Aristotle’s Politics (Jowett's 
rranslation) 1, II, 58.