[54 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
which are enacted each year are primarily due to our own 
unwillingness to perform the duties of intelligent citizens. If 
we get bad laws, we have ourselves to blame for it. 
One of the seemingly perennial sources of economic legis- 
lation that is unenforceable and harmful is speculation and the 
various forms it takes in the business world of today. Justice 
Holmes of the United States Supreme Court has tersely and 
shrewdly stated the situation regarding such legislation :* 
It’s true that the success of the strong induces imitation by the 
weak, and that incompetent persons bring themselves to ruin by 
attempting to speculate in their turn. But legislatures and courts 
generally have recognized that the natural evolutions of a complex 
society are to be touched only with a very cautious hand, and that such 
coarse attempts at a remedy for the waste incident to every social func- 
tion as a simple prohibition and laws to stop its being, are harmful and 
vain. 
The same general point—the impossibility of adequately 
and successfully halting speculation by statute—was testified 
‘0 by the late H. C. Emery, probably the highest economic 
authority on speculation in America :* 
You cannot stop speculation in industrial securities, and you cannot 
stop speculation in anything by any process of law. Just as long as 
he value of property fluctuates, men will buy and sell with a hope of 
profit. There will be speculation of some kind. If you throw it out 
»f an organized exchange, you throw it out into the street. If you 
-hrow it out of Berlin you can throw it into London. But somehow 
and some way, just as long as wheat fluctuates in value, people are 
going to buy and sell wheat; just as long as land fluctuates in value 
people are going to buy and sell land. Just as long as stocks fluctuate 
in value, people are going to buy and sell stocks. 
Legislation and Economic Principles.—That this view of 
the matter is correct is borne out by the experience of all 
nations at all times. Particularly in the typical instance of the 
much abused short sale, the most meticulously drafted regu- 
lative laws passed in England, Germany, France, and this coun- 
34 Chicago Board of Trade Case, May 8, 1905. 
85 “Reonlation of the Stock Exchange.” n. 325.