But the charity of the Stock Exchange by no means ends at home. To use words recently written by a Lord Mayor of London, "the spirit of loyalty and patriotism which has ever characterised the members of the House is especially exhibited in practical and overflowing sympathy in times of distress and anxiety." Those words were written in acknowledgment of the receipt of a sum of nearly £35,000, which the members of the Stock Exchange had subscribed to the Mansion House Fund for the relief of the widows and orphans and other sufferers by the Transvaal War. They had subscribed over £20,000 to the Transvaal Refugees' Fund, and gave not only of their money but of their blood in the cause. One member returned from the field with the Victoria Cross. The Stock Exchange supports its own hospital wards, its own lifeboats, its boys' home, and so on.
Except in the vague idea of the puritanical faddist, the Stock Exchange is an institution as lovable as it is fascinating. It may be, and often is, the cause of ruin to those who abuse its facilities--to those who are gamblers rather than either investors or speculators. It is quite easy to draw the line between the three classes of business, or rather, the two classes of business and the one class of folly. The investor lends his money on perfectly safe security to the aid of commerce and industry, expecting a comparatively small return, but that a safe one. By so doing he is encouraged in thrift, whilst commerce and industry enjoys the benefit of the capital, and the Stock Exchange is the medium of it all. The speculator, less conservative, risks money, the loss of which he is perfectly well able to afford, in the furtherance of experiments in commerce and industry, be it the trial of a patent or the opening up of a mine. He expects a big return should the experiment prove successful, but is prepared to face the loss should it turn out otherwise. He hopes to enrich himself, and without his aid commerce and industry would make none of those rapid strides which are for the welfare of the world, for speculation is the handmaid of enterprise. The gambler, frequently usurping the name of speculator and thus bringing legitimate speculation into ill-odour, risks money which he cannot afford to lose, staking all in an inordinate desire for riches. Although the line between speculation, which is perfectly legitimate, and mere gambling can easily be drawn, it must be drawn by each individual for himself. A perfectly legitimate speculation for a rich man might be an act of folly for a man of moderate means. Between risking money which can easily be afforded in a project well studied and thought out, however uncertain, and risking money which cannot be afforded in a project of which nothing is known, on the chance that some extraneous circumstance may arise to multiply its value, there is a wide gulf fixed. The gamblers it is from whom are drawn the operators and dabblers who play with the Stock Exchange as they would with a pack of cards, or with the chances of the race-course, to their own loss and to the profit of insiders who, whenever they are called upon to play such a game, always show in the long-run that they know most of it. It is the Stock Exchange gambler rather than the investor, or the speculator who moves legitimately within his means, who may rejoice in the boom with its roaring business and rising prices, but who forms the real element of danger in a slump with its sudden depreciation, and who frequently turns the slump into a crisis, and eventually into a panic. These panics are less frequently with us than they were, less widespread and less disastrous in their effects, thanks to the rapid dissemination of true news, and to the highly organised state to which the machinery of finance has attained; but they will ever recur to provide a wholesome check to those who are tempted to go beyond their depth, allowing legitimate speculation to deteriorate into mere gambling. The Stock Exchange offers facilities for such gambling, just as food offers facilities for over-eating; yet food is not only a good thing, but a necessity, and so is the Stock Exchange.