Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1901-06-14
CURSE OF SPECULATION.
Or. TaImage Draws Lessons From
Gambling Crazes Which Have
Swept Over the World.
Integrity aud ViIlainy in Wall Street..MOney
Is q Gold Breasted Bird With
Silver Beak.
lCopyright 1901. /.

WASHINGTON, IL. C.-ln tDlS DISCOURSE
DR.. Talmage arraigns the spirit of wild
speculation and gives some account of
the financial ruin of other days; Proverbs
XIII, 5, Riches certainly make them
selves wings; they fly away as an eagle
toward heaven"
Money is a gold breasted bird with
silver beak. 1t alghts on the office
desk or in the counting room or on the
parlor centre table. Men and women
stand and admire it. They do not notice
that it has wings larger than ravens,
larger than hamingo's, larger than an
eagles. One wave of the hand of mis-
fortune, and it spreads its beautiful
plumage and is gone, 'as an eagle toward
heaven" my textbook says, though some
times ! think it goes in the other diree'
ton.
What verifcation we have had Of
the flying capacity of riches in Wall
Street, And Wall Street is one of the
not begin at the foot Of Trinity Church,
New York, and end at the East River, as
many suppose. 1t reaches through all
our American cities and across the seas
Encouraged by the revival of trade and
by the fact that Wall Street disasters OF
other years were so far back as to be
forgotten, spectators run up the stocks
from point to point until innocent people
on the outside suppose that the stocks
would always continue to ascend. They
gather in from all parts of the country,
Large sums of money are taken into
Wall Street and small sums of money
The crash comes, thank God, in time to
warn off a great many who were on
their way thither, for the sadness of the
thing is that great many of the young
e. - ,,1,o on
for the purpose of starting themselves
in business and who have $500 or $1,000
or $4,000 or $4,000 60 into Wall Street
and lose all. And if there was time for
the pulpit to speak out in regard to GER
tain kinds of nefarious enterprises now
is the time.
Stocks rose and fell, and now they
begin to rise again; and they will fall
again until thousands of young men will
be ruined unless the printing press and
the pulpit give emphatic utterance. My
counsel is to countrymen, so far as they
may hear of this discourse, if they have
surplus, to invest it in first mortgages
and in moneyed institutions which, though
paying comparatively small interest, are
sound and safe beyond dispute, and to
stand clear of the Wall Street vortex,
where so many have been swamped and
the healthy condition of our country that
these recent disasters have in no wise
depressed trade! l thank God that Wall
Streets capacity to blast this country
has gone forever.
Across the island of New York in
1856 a wall made of stone and earth
and cannon mounted was built to keep of
the savages. Along by that wall a street
was laid out, and as the street followed
the line of the wall it was appropriately
called Wall Street. 1t is narrow, it is
unarchitectural, and yet it's history is
unique. Excepting Lombard street, Lon
planet. There the Government of the
United States was born. There Washing
ton held his levees. There Mrs. Adams
and Mrs. Caldwell and Mrs. Knox and
other brilliant women of the Revolution
displayed their charms. There Wither-
son and Jonathan Edwards and George
Whitefeld sometimes preached. There
DR.. Mason chided Alexander Hamilton
for writing the Constitution of the Uni
ted States without any God in it. There
negroes were sold in the slave mart
There criminals were harnessed to wheel.
barrows and, like beasts of burden, COM
PEELED to draw or were dashed through
the streets behind carts to which they
were IdSISU6u, lueTe lOC6uucS udNC COhc
to coronation or burial since the. day
when reckless spectators in powdered
hair and silver shoe buckles lodged Du.
gan, the Governor-General of His Maj.
esty, clear down to yesterday at o'clock.
The history of Wall Street is to a Ger.
tain extent the financial, commercial,
agricultural, mining, literary, artistic,
moral and religious history of this coun'
try. There are the best men in this
country, and there are the worst. Every.
thing from answering integrity to tip.
top oundrelism-everythin from heav.
en- born charity to bloodless Shylock'
ism. / want to put the plow in at the
curbstone of Trinity and drive it clear
through to Wall Street ferry, and SO it
shall 60 if the horses are strong enough
to draw the pillow.
First of all, Wall Street stands as a
type in this country for tried integrity
and the most outrageous villainy. Farm.
ers who have only few hundred dol
lars worth of produce to put on the mar.
ket have but little to test their charac
ter, but put a man into the seven times
heated furnace of Wall Street excite
ment and he either comes out Shadrach,
with hair unsinged, or he is burned into
a black moral cinder. No half way work
about it, If l wanted to find integrity
bombproof, / would go among the bank
ers and merchants of Wall Street, yet be-
cause there have been such villainies enact
ed there at different times some men
have supposed that it is great financial
debauchery, and they hardly dare go
near the street or walk up and down it
unless they have buttoned up their last
pocket and had their lives insured or re.
ligiously crossed themselves. Yet if you
start at either end of the street and
read the business signs you will find the
names of more men of integrity and
Christian benevolence than you can find
in the same space in any street OF any
of our cities. When the Christian COM
mission and the sanitary commission
wanted money to send medicine and band
ages to the wounded, when breadstuffs
were wanted for furnishing Ireland, when
colleges were to be endowed and churches
were to be supported and missionary So
cieties were to be equippd for their work
of sending the gospel all around the
world, the first street to respond has
sponses in all the land have come from
Wall Street.
But, while that street is type of tried
integrity on one hand, it is also type OF
unbounded swindle on the other. There
are the spiders that wait for innocent
flies; there are the crocodiles that crawl
up through the slime to cranch the calf;
there are the anacondas, with lifted loop,
ready to crush the unwary; there are fl
nancial wreckers who stand on the
beach praying for Caribbean whirlwind
to sweep over our commercial interests.
Let me say it is no place for a man to
90 into business unless his moral princi-
pie is thoroughly settled. That is no
place for a man to go into business who
does not know when he is overpaid S. by
mistake whether he had better take it
back or not; that is no place for a man
to go who has large funds in trust and
,rbo g oil he tino tampfad IN cpaoulo 70