Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.
It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit, or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the original maker to live in luxury.
Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say “God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know stock-brokers--many indeed--who are whole-souled, noble-natured men, free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community, typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts, and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world, and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent fish as on a successful stock-broker.