STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 145

model or the scientist's discovery may seem, the financial speculator
 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 speculation.
 For speculation in the best sense is the investment of capital and
the use of credit to finance enterprises which promise to yield handsome
 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 successful
 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.