STOCK EXCHANGE AND AMERICAN BUSINESS 473
months further than many business men do, yet of course the
thoroughgoing student of practical business economics would
not wish to confine his attention solely to it. And as it is with
the vision of Wall Street men, so it is too with their tempera-
ment. When ticker prices climb, they are joyous optimists,
but the next day, when the ticker reports declining prices, they
become sad and melancholy indeed.
But if the average Wall Street man is in a human way the
victim of intense specialization and absorption in his own im-
mediate environment to the exclusion of a wider and deeper
understanding of economic forces and tendencies, the same
thing may be urged against the average American business
man who judges the work of Wall Street only from rumor and
hearsay evidence. Manufacturers often wonder at the occa-
sional gyrations of their stocks in the stock market, and their
habitual assumption that somehow or other the Stock Exchange
itself must be responsible for them is a fallacy as natural as
it 1s erroneous.
No Royal Road to Understanding Price Changes.—The
real understanding of prices and price changes in our organ-
ized markets involves not so much romantic mysteries or aston-
ishing human-interest stories, as a painstaking and unenliven-
ing study of the “dismal science” of economics. The student
must become familiar with abstract conceptions and much tech-
nical terminology; he must pore over many initially bewilder-
ing statistical tables and graphic charts; and in addition he
must gain by equally laborious means a knowledge of many
markets and marketing methods. In this formidable and super-
ficially dull undertaking there are no short-cuts or simple but
secret formulas, nor, despite the assurances of those philan-
thropic individuals who occasionally advertise “How to make
money in the stock market in 10 easy lessons,” is there any
royal road to learning.
The Universal Habit of Personifying.—Now the great
majority of mankind, whether through preoccupation or lazi-
