ARTHUR.T Stories ----A Study in Finance ----VI---Page 29

"He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent."

--PROVERBS 28:20.

The victim of moral overstrain is the central figure in many novels and
countless magazine stories. In most of them he finally repents him fully
of his sins past and returns to his former or to some equally desirable
position, to lead a new and better life. The dangers and temptations of
the "Street" are, however, too real and terrible to be studied other
than in actuality, and the fall of hundreds of previously honest young
men owing to easily remedied conditions should teach its lesson, not
only to their comrades, but to their employers as well. The ball and
chain, quite as often as repentance and forgiveness, ends their
experience.

No young man takes a position in a banking-house with the deliberate

intention of becoming an embezzler. He knows precisely, as well as does
the reader, that if he listens to the whisper of temptation he is
lost--and so does his employer. Yet the employer, who would hold himself
remiss if he allowed his little boy to have the run of the jam-closet
and then discovered that the latter's lips bore evidence of petty
larceny, or would regard himself as almost criminally negligent if he
placed a priceless pearl necklace where an ignorant chimney-sweep might
fall under the hypnotism of its shimmer, will calmly allow a condition
of things in his own brokerage or banking office where a
fifteen-dollars-a-week clerk may have free access to a million dollars'
worth of negotiable securities, and even encourage the latter by
occasional "sure" tips to take a flyer in the market.

It is a deplorable fact that the officers of certain companies

occasionally "unload" undesirable securities upon their employees, and,
in order to boom or create a "movement" in a certain stock, will induce
the persons under their control to purchase it. It would be a rare case
in which a clerk who valued his situation would refuse to take a few
shares in an enterprise which the head of the firm was fathering. Of
course, such occurrences are the exceptions, but there are plenty of
houses not far from Wall Street where the partners know that their
clerks and messengers are "playing the market," and exert not the
slightest influence to stop them. When these men find that they and
their customers, and not the clerks and messengers, are paying the loss
accounts of the latter, they are very much distressed, and tell the
District Attorney, with regret, that only by sending such wicked and

treacherous persons to State's prison can similar dishonesty be prevented.

Not long ago the writer became acquainted with a young man who, as loan
clerk in a trust company, had misappropriated a large amount of
securities and had pleaded guilty to the crime of grand larceny in the
first degree. He was awaiting sentence, and in connection therewith it
became necessary to examine into the conditions prevailing generally in
the financial district. His story is already public property, for the
case attracted wide attention in the daily press; but, inasmuch as the
writer's object is to point a moral rather than adorn a tale, the
culprit's name and the name of the company with which he was connected
need not be given.

He is now serving a term in State's prison and is, the writer believes,
sincerely repentant and determined to make a man of himself upon his
release. For present purposes let him be called John Smith. He was born
in New York City, in surroundings rather better than the average. His
family were persons of good education and his home was a comfortable and
happy one. From childhood he received thorough religious instruction
and was always a straightforward, honest and obedient boy. His father,
having concluded from observation that the shortest route to success lay
in financial enterprise, secured a place in a broker's office for his
son after the latter's graduation from the high school. John began at
the bottom and gradually worked up to the position of assistant loan
clerk in a big trust company. This took fifteen years of hard work.

From the day that he started in filling inkwells and cleaning out ticker
baskets, he saw fortunes made and lost in a twinkling. He learned that
the chief business of a broker is acting as go-between for persons who
are trying to sell what they do not own to others who have not the money
to pay for what they buy. And he saw hundreds of such persons grow rich
on these fictitious transactions. He also saw others "wiped out," but
they cheerfully went through bankruptcy and began again, many of them
achieving wealth on their second or third attempt. He was earning five
dollars a week and getting his lunch at a "vegetarian health restaurant"
for fifteen cents. The broker, for whom he ran errands, gave away
thirty-five-cent cigars to his customers and had an elaborate luncheon
served in the office daily to a dozen or more of the elect. John knew
one boy of about his own age, who, having made a successful turn, began
as a trader and cleaned up a hundred thousand dollars in a rising market
the first year. That was better than the cleaning up John was used to.
But he was a sensible boy and had made up his mind to succeed in a
legitimate fashion. Gradually he saved a few hundred dollars and, acting
on the knowledge he had gained in his business, bought two or three
shares in a security which quickly advanced in value and almost doubled
his money. The next time as well fortune favored him, and he soon had a
comfortable nest-egg--enough to warrant his feeling reasonably secure in 

 

the event of accident or sickness.