STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 155 
try tell only of failure and final repeal.®®* The fact of the mat- 
ter is that in attempts to legislate concerning so universal and 
fundamental a matter as speculation, the statute-makers set 
themselves against more powerful laws than any statute which 
ever adorned the printed page—the irresistible economic laws 
by whose processes nations have risen and fallen, and owing to 
whose unimpeded operation not merely progress, not merely 
the maintenance of the present business and social order, but 
the ability of the human being to find the food, shelter, and 
clothing necessary to mere existence and life itself, are basically 
and necessarily due. These principles defy the passing fiat of 
unwise legislators and hasty public opinion almost as com- 
pletely as the law of gravitation. The law-makers who attempt 
to hamper with unscientific legislation the life-giving economic 
energies released by speculation, are embarking on perilous 
waters; any temporary success of their efforts only intensifies 
the ultimate recoil of pent-up economic forces to the destruction 
of civilization and human life. 
Education the Only Genuine Remedy.—This is as true of 
speculation in the stock exchanges, although the bearing here is 
less direct and obvious, as it is of speculation in the wider fields 
of agriculture and commerce. The complex and tested ma- 
chinery by which the New York Stock Exchange practically 
and successfully administers the principal American market 
place for securities, with constant regard for the fundamental 
economic forces exerting themselves within it, affords a steady 
contrast in the swiftness and flexibility of its operation to the 
dogmatic and futile statutes concerning speculation with which 
the history of legislation from the Middle Ages to the present 
day is replete. Evils in the speculative factors inherent in pro- 
duction and distribution there undoubtedly are, but there exist 
no possible legislative short-cuts or panaceas for their abolition. 
Only the slow and tedious but old and sure method of educating 
the people into an understanding of economic law, particularly 
 % See Chapter VIL, p. 200.