136 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
abolished. Just as the king in the old play cried, “Off with his
head! So much for Buckingham!” so, too, these people seize
upon the seemingly simple expedient of curing headaches with
the guillotine. But in spite of laws, in spite of threats, penal-
ties, and restrictions, made in many lands by many peoples
over the course of many centuries, speculation and speculative
markets have stubbornly endured. The attempt at their aboli-
tion has invariably failed. As recently as 1896 the German
government attempted to do away with speculation in securities
and commodities.?* Yet in spite of the characteristic Teutonic
thoroughness, in spite of the despotic powers of the Prussian
state, this attempt not only failed of adequate enforcement to
such an extent that its regulations came to border on farce and
absurdity, but it directly resulted in crippling the Berlin finan-
cial markets so thoroughly that when the law was repealed in
[gog, their power had largely passed to London, Amsterdam,
and Paris.
Most anti-speculation legislation has attempted to forbid
speculation in certain forms of property, or to prevent certain
classes of people from speculating, or to prohibit certain meth-
ods by which speculation is ordinarily conducted. But invaria-
bly experience has shown that the former two courses were
arbitrary and inconsistent, while the last course was superficial
and futile.
Perhaps the most thoroughgoing attempt to abolish specu-
lation has been made in Bolshevist Russia... The ingenuous
but fanatical theorist Lenin at first ordered traders and dealers
lined against the wall and shot. Yet speculative trading went
on, at extortionate prices and with unwholesome economic
consequences. And instead of the glittering Utopia which this
theorist and his confederates expected to establish, what actu-
ally followed? Russian industry collapsed, unemployment
spread. In the cities starvation and the plague wrought a havoc
unparalleled since the Thirty Years’ War, until city life itself
"16 See Emery. “Regulation of the Stock Exchange.” p. 822.
