The work of the Stock Exchange

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The dangers and benefits of stock speculation

Collection:: Economics Books

STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 145 model or the scientist's discovery may seem, the financial specu- lator must actively intervene before they can be placed at the daily service of mankind. As Hirst so well says :® The rapid development of material resources, mining, agriculture, manufactures, transportation, is of necessity associated with specula- tion. For speculation in the best sense is the investment of capital and the use of credit to finance enterprises which promise to yield hand- some profits. But for a verdant and evergreen faith, salted with the love of risk and adventure for their own sakes, how could mountains be bored and waters bridged? If there were not superstition, there could be no religion; if there were no bad speculations there could be no good investments; if there were no wild ventures there would be no brilliantly successful enterprises; the same sort of sentiment which gave Dr. Cook a temporary notoriety invested Hansen with permanent fame. New York, then, must be valued fairly, not as a sort of gambling hell, but as a nerve center of North American enterprise. The Economic Value of Unsuccessful Speculation.— Almost all intelligently conducted experiments serve a useful purpose in the long run. The real invention, like the telegraph or the combustion engine, which is at first usually deemed only a “cracked inventor's dream,” provides a direct illustration of the value to society at large of financial speculation. But even failures may not be without an ultimate economic benefit. Just as in science there have been no striking discoveries without many futile experiments, so too in finance there have rarely if ever been great successes which have conferred services upon millions, without preliminary unsuccessful speculations. It was not until railroading on wooden rails, with sails, mules, and hand-cars as motive power, had been eliminated from the field of practical possibility by actual and costly trial that steam railroading on steel rails finally became a success. If the suc- cessful speculator is the hero of progress, the unsuccessful speculator is often the martyr to progress. If the Anglo-Saxon race had always waited for a “sure thing,” it would still be tending goats on the foothills of the Himalayas, instead of directing the destinies of most of the civilized world today. "= Hirst, “The Stock Exchange.” o. 244.

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