The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-11-25
Selfish GREED
Of WALL STREET
How and Why the Nations
Financial Nerve Center Is De-
Stroying Life of Country.
DRAWS MEN OF CHARACTER
FROM FIELDS AND PURSUITS IN
WHICH THEY MIGHT SHINE.

The financial nerVe-ceIlter of this con-
tinent is situated on a narrow street run
ming from lower Broadway to the estuary
separating New York from Brooklyn. As
a symbol of the speculation underlying
the larger part of modern industry, Wall
street has become the expression of re-
lentless materialism and selfish greed,
until to many we'll meaning people il is
complex OF Monte Carlo and the pawn
shop, of the highway and the arena, or
the devil and the deep sea, says the MIN
ing and Scientific Press. Away from New
York, on the farms of Nebraska or among
the mines of Colorado, this Wall street
is spoken of as something utterly wicked
and hOpelessly unregenerate. Populist
orators may be responsible for Sucn
Islander, but there are reasons less super
ficial. Certain II is that no one Is NOR q
surprised at the unfriendly opinions OF
such provincials than is the banker or
broker whose whole soul is in the great
game played where Nassau, Broad anu
Wall streets come tOgether-the ganglon
of a tense nervous system whose tWltch-
1ngs conVulse the markets of TINS con-
tinent from New York to San Francisco,
from Montreal to the City of Mexico
Let us analyZe this prejudice against
Wall street. Is IL merely the expression
of ignorance or due to jealousy of those
that pull the strings? Is It only the sneer
of the disgruntled or the vaporings OF a
disseminated mind2 We think not To
as there is a basic reason for the at
titude assumed by the majority of peo-
pie in the west in regarding Wall street
as the eptome of sinister speculative ac-
tivity. We share it ourselves, for the fol-
lowing reasons.
Why Wall Street is Ruinous.
Wall street absorbs too much of the
productive energy OF the country InuS.
take a community like Denver or Salt
Lake. There you have a population OF,
say 10000 to 100000 and the distributing
center for a mineral and agricultural
region of varied resources. Among the
citizens there are a number Of men dis
tinguished for wealth and Initiative. II
a new gold field is discovered there are
always a few such men able and willing
10 buy the prospects and make them
mines, by spending money in exploration
and equipment If an agricultural eX-
pertinent is to be made, by irrigation
or the cultivation of a new product, such
men are ready to take the risk of start
ing the fresh enterprise. If branch rail-
roads are required. they supply the capt.
tai; if public utilities need to be financed,
they come forward.
We speak of the kind of man that is
responsible for the industrial development
of America, real captains of industry, not
chevaliers d'industTie. but men of marked
originality, broad imagination and invinc-
ible courage. those that do things. This
type of man means much 10 a people en-
gagged upon the industrial conquest of "A
continent But this is the kind of man
that Wall street entices, engulfs and
spues out-brOken and worthless. For,
finding that money can be made faster
and more easily by buying mining stocks
than by developing mines. such men cease
to devote themselves to the creative side
of industry and become mere gamblers
they leave the west and stay at the
Waldorf.
Other men. who built railroads and were
discovered to have unusual executive
ability in the administration of a great
system of transport, also abandoned the
career in which they were of such obvious
usefulness il order to speculate in rail
road stocks; they no longer build rail-
roads, they help to wreck the companies
controlling them; at the best they end
In running themselves. if not financially.
at least as productive members of the
community. II is not necessary TO expand
the theme by referring 10 other examples
of misdirected energy. The general result
, IS that a diStrcssingly large proportion
Of the pioneer type of man, the men that
blaze the trail of industry. are taken
away. to become essentially unprOductive
spectators. From the provincial town
they go to the financial center. from the
factory to the hotel. from the mine to
the bucket shop In short. Wall street
absorbs too many Of the dynamic men of
America