profits. State bonds also were sold in Wall Street in larger amounts than to-day. About the year 1850 the sales of Missouri sixes and Ohio sixes frequently amounted to millions of dollars daily. During that uncertain epoch of finance when the United States Bank was both a financial and a political power, the shares of that institution were a favorite subject of speculative dealing. The shares of Delaware & Hudson, and of the original Erie Railway, the latter laboriously constructed over a rough, barren, and thinly settled portion of the State, partly by State funds, had also become actively exchangeable in the market.

During this period a relatively enormous quantity of banking capital had located itself in and near Wall Street. The Bank of New York existed before 1800, and later, although not long after, the Street witnessed the erection of buildings of a now obsolete, and yet at that time an attractive, style of architecture, devoted to the uses of the Manhattan Banking Company, the Bank of America, the Merchants, the Union, the Bank of Commerce, and others. Were it not that land in the banking district is so valuable, and that the need of upstair offices is so great, one might be tempted to regret the demolition of the graceful money temples occupied by three of these corporations on the north side of Wall Street. In each of them the entablature rested upon two fluted stone pillars with Doric capitals, in addition to the supports of the side walls. Between the steps and the doors of the temple extended a marble-paved court which often served as a convenient place of ‘change for borrowers and lenders. Entering the doors you found yourself in a large, airy, dome-lighted room, the sides of which were occupied by the clerks of the institution, guarded by high barricades from the intrusive eyes and feet of the general public. At the rear were the offices of the president and cashier. Throughout the entire building there reigned a solemn and semi-religious silence. One may witness something like this to-day in the Wall-Street end of the U. S. Treasury Building, and only there.

Up to the epoch of the rise of railway building and railway-share speculation, the main aliment of Wall-Street banks was the profit derived from the discount of commercial paper and from loans upon government and State securities. But when railway shares and bonds, based upon lines of road which were constructed through the rich regions of the Union lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi river, came upon the market in large amounts, affording ample security for investment and loans, the great banks of Wall Street were quick to appreciate the advantages of loans made upon such undoubted values, which were at all times convertible into cash on the stock exchange. In times of pressure, commercial paper is an inferior asset for a bank, all of whose obligations are payable on demand. At such times notes become practically unsalable, and are not always paid at maturity. A failure of one firm brings down others, and renewals are urgently required from banks just when they are least able to grant them. Salable securities are on such occasions an ark of safety, and, dating from the early fifties, this class of securities has always been the basis of a large amount of the loans of the banks of Wall Street and their near neighbors of the same class in lower Nassau Street and also Broadway.

With the immense outgrowth of business consequent upon the discovery of gold in California in 1849, and the construction of the great railways of the Middle West, such as the Michigan Southern, the Northern Indiana (now the Lake Shore), the Michigan Central, the Galena & Chicago, the Rock Island, and others of like importance and real value, the banks and banking houses of Wall Street, and the stock exchange, grew into most important factors in developing the prosperity of the country. Enterprises were originated by able men acting under corporate powers, and when these were brought before the committees of the stock exchange and duly approved and listed, capital instantly flowed forth from its reservoirs in answer to the securities thus offered. And it may safely be said that but for the combined machinery of the New York banks and the stock exchange the actual developments of twenty years would have dragged laboriously through an entire century.

Amid so much progress and activity, speculation was not idle. Those were the days of many of our greatest railway operators, daring, able, enthusiastic men, who had the rare gift of imparting confidence to their followers and the public, and realized the fable of King Midas, whose touch transmuted all things into gold. Their careers were those of conquest and accumulation, like that of Napoleon; and, like him, they underwent, with few exceptions, their retreats from Russia and their Waterloos. Of such were Jacob Little, Daniel Drew, Anthony Morse, and others, to whom now the motto of Junius applies: Stat nominis umbra. Merely the shadows of their names reach over to us from the horizons where their suns set so long ago.

There was an epoch too in the Wall Street of the past when gigantic and deeply considered combinations were set in motion, entitled “corners.” As to corners, a word of explanation may not be amiss. There are always two factions in the stock market: the bulls, who want stocks to rise in price in order that they may sell out; and the bears, who want stocks to fall in price so that they can buy in. Contrary to the superficial belief of the public, the bulls are sellers and the bears are buyers. But in order to sell a commodity you must buy or borrow it; and in order to buy at a future date you must sell at a previous date; and thus the bull buys for the purpose of selling at a profit, and the bear sells something which he doesn’t own for the purpose of buying it at a lower price. The bull therefore hopes to push prices up so that he can sell his purchase at a profit, and the bear hopes to drag prices down so that he can buy what he has sold, also at a profit.

Meanwhile, the bear has delivered the shares sold by him, and in order to deliver them, has borrowed them, and given security in money at its market price. Here he has placed himself in danger, because the owner of the shares may at any time tender him this money and demand the shares, which the bear may not be able to provide himself with, except at the price which the owners choose to set upon them.

Thus a person might be under contract to deliver the shares of some corporation which might be absolutely worthless, and yet these shares might be so held that the holders could exact one thousand dollars a share. Given a railway with a share capital of ten millions, one person or knot of persons might own every certificate of its stock, and have it all loaned out to bears who had sold, borrowed, and delivered it. It is obvious that this person or club of persons could compel purchases of the shares which he or they alone possess, at whatever price he or they think proper to demand; and since such things can be done by skilful combinations under able generalship, they have been done, and were a favorite scheme during the eventful years between the sixties and the eighties. The corners in Harlem, Hudson, Erie and Northwest, in which Vanderbilt, Drew, and Gould achieved such success for themselves and their associates, have passed into history as a conspicuous portion of the great events of Wall Street. Their interest is chiefly historical, because of late years no comprehensive corners have been organized. Share capitals are so large that it is difficult for one man to control any one of them, and a divided corner is apt to fail. But in their day and generation they have offered brilliant illustrations of genius and strategic skill in financial warfare.

The system of selling short, however, which gave birth to the idea of creating