city. In the morning the walls were placarded with lying posters which said that the delivery of the government into the hands of the Hessians had been rendered necessary in order “to preserve the national honor!” It was done in order to keep faith with those benevolent patriots who had bought the debt of the nation at less than fifty cents to the dollar, and who, not satisfied with bringing it to par, were now engaged in the honorable work of making it worth two hundred cents to the dollar. The fact that the industries of the people would be crushed and the people themselves be reduced to poverty by the transfer of the national sovereignty from the capitol to the stock exchange was nothing in comparison with the “preservation of national honor.”

The scheme was carried out. The methods by which it was carried out constitute the subject-matter of the true history of Wall Street during the past generation. Wall Street, from being a financial organization, became a political power. It took full possession of the executive and legislative departments of the government. It controlled them both. It promptly established and defended its ownership. It instituted one scheme after another. For the purpose of fortifying its usurpation, it learned to choose its men and to prepare its measures in advance. In 1884 it created an administration for its own purposes, and manned it to the same end. It forced its way into the House of Representatives and stood with a bludgeon behind the Speaker’s chair. It entered every committee-room and dictated every successful bill. The people’s bills all went one way. If by any chance one of the people’s bills got before the House the subsidized press, owned by Wall Street, raised against it a chorus of groans and catcalls; that was “an expression of public opinion”!

From that day forth the popular voice was strangled into silence. The next administration (that of 1888) was prepared in the same manner. Wall Street has no politics except the politics of the bond; it has no platform except the platform of cent per cent. It suffices that when a president is to be elected he shall be one of us. He shall not be a man of the people; else in that case he would be a demagogue, a windbag, a vox et præterea nil. Our man shall not even know the despised people. He shall not smell of the filthy ground, but must be “sound” on questions of finance. If he be not “sound,” we will make him so. We will teach him his paces. If the people conclude to change their government, we will see to it that the incoming powers are just like the outgoing. As for the “principles” on which the candidate shall be chosen, we will attend to that. We will make his principles for him. We understand principles perfectly. We will fix the platform; we know the carpenters. If the candidate and his friends have already fixed a platform before the date of the convention, and if it have been published everywhere as the decision of the candidate and his following, we will take that platform from the wires and will carefully revise it, to the end that the “national honor” shall be preserved. We will write it over again into new meanings. We will interpret it so that no harm shall be done to the “national credit.” We will make our candidate into a puppet. When we put our foot on the treadle his jaw shall drop and he shall utter many mocking words about the “national honor” and the “prospects of our glorious country”—signifying nothing.

All this we will do for the public good. We will say that we are striving for national prosperity. We will proclaim our candidate as the advance agent of prosperity—until after the election. Then we will say that prosperity will come with the inauguration. Then we will say that it will shine out promptly when Congress adjourns and ceases to menace the national credit. Then we will say that prosperity will reveal itself when the hot season is over. By this time the hoodwinked people can be coddled to sleep, or else set to dancing with rumors of foreign wars. To this end we will have our newspapers carefully promote our principles and studiously avoid all reference to those subjects in which the people feel the deepest concern. Finally, we will omit all these matters from our history of “Wall Street, Past;” we will proceed to speak of our “Wall Street, Present,” and will explain that it is in a state of “lassitude and expectancy.” Indeed “lassitude and expectancy” is good.

But there is still another yawning chasm in the history of “Wall Street, Past,” and that is Mr. Clews’s failure to discuss the transfer of the Treasury of the United States to the custody of the Street, and the consequent reduction of the Secretary of the Treasury to the rank of a clerk. This very thing has been most successfully accomplished. I believe that the Secretary still has an office at Washington, but that should be closed in the interest of economy and reform. To do so, we doubt not, would be a strong factor in the restoration of confidence. Perhaps the Washington office might be left in charge of a janitor, for it is understood that some official correspondence is still directed to the old address! The presence of the Secretary in New York, however, has become so essential to the proper discharge of his duties that the removal of his residence thither can only be deferred by an absurd deference to public opinion!

The results of the transfer of this vital function of the national government have, in the meantime, been so salutary as fully to vindicate the change. This was shown in 1893-94 when the Street, with a strong repugnance to investing money in useful enterprises, and having a prodigious accumulation of funds on hand, concluded that a sale of Government bonds was necessary for the “national honor.” To this end the managers began to pull the treasury. In that institution a large sum of gold was stored, wholly without warrant of law. The people needed the gold beyond measure—that is, they needed the money; and gold is one form of money. The industries of the people had been prostrated by an international conspiracy, and the nation was quivering on the verge of apprehended ruin.

In this crisis the patriotic Street devised the bucket-chain, the crank of which was in the hand of the Street, while the “chain” ran through the Treasury of the United States. Every bucket came out filled with gold. Lazard Frères emptied out the gold and shipped it abroad to their confederates. This created the necessity for buying it back with bonds. The people were stunned with the audacity of the thing—just as the unfortunate owners of a house in flames are stunned to see gentlemen of the profession rush in and empty the safe. Wall Street danced and shouted while the work was done. The bonds were “popular,” and the Street got them—got them for one price and sold them for another.

By this beautiful process the great American nation was literally held up and robbed of more than nineteen million dollars! No highwayman ever more successfully clutched the wizen of his victim than did the Street with its supple fingers around the white larynx of Columbia. The wheezing of the strangulated Republic could be heard from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande. The nation was thus “saved,” and the robbers took the money and went sailing away on summer cruises to Norway and Venice and the Cyclades. The “national credit” was preserved; Wall Street “rescued” us from dishonor! That part of the proceeds not consumed in yacht races, pyrotechnics, and balls was passed to the credit of the reform fund, needed for the restoration of prosperity in the fall of 1896! Certainly a history of “Wall Street, Past,” ought to contain some reference to these crimes.

Mr. Clews, turning to “Wall Street, Present,” tells the nation that now