Men and Mysteries of Wall Street (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from Men and Mysteries of Wall Street

Cent British consols or United States 5-20s. Commo dore Vanderbilt can convert the bulk of his vast prop erty into money in a day. There is no similar market ready to perform a like service for William B. Astor. The Spragues of Rhode Island are slaves to their fac tories. The heavy cattle-raisers of Texas, the great far mers of California and Illinois, the mill-owners of New England, are not merely subject to fluctuations in the prices of their products, they are the veriest victims of circumstance whenever they attempt to turn their prop erty into coin, or the equivalents of coin. Daniel Drew, the drover, had come to comprehend this serfdom very thoroughly before he took up his quarters at the Bull Head Tavern and mastered the subtleties of Erie specu lation. Up and down the human gamut it is everywhere the same, even to the affairs of the most modest of capital ists. The clergyman whose ten years' faithful ministry has resulted in the painful saving of a thousand dollars is very much at the mercy of his parish if his money is in land, and quite his own master if it be locked up in bonds or shares, merchantable at once in the great city which lies an hour's distance from his village. The tradesman in extremity is keenly aware of the advantage of collaterals over mortgage. Gloucester fishermen know the difference between sloops in the Bay of Fundy and a package of Boston and Maine R. R. Stock stowed away in a bank-vault.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Men and Mysteries of Wall Street

The farthest reach audacious speculation in our day is not without a definite background of conservatism. An age of steam has stringent need of immense balance-wheels. The sharp and fevered struggle for wealth has created a necessity for secure investment; and no man,however gigantic may be the balances of his ledgers, feels himself safely over the bridge of fortune until his assets assume the shape of quickly realizable values. Hence the ease with which national debts are now funded and joint-stock enterprises are set on foot. With an instantaneous exchangeable value for all kinds of property in the world's market, and an average certainty of return to invested capital, mankind would deem itself not far from the threshold of the millennium. And it is because civilization has as yet failed to make adequate progress in this direction with reference to the products of agriculture and machinery, that great money-marts have arisen and expanded into paramount importance.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.