A man of this class will reason: I know
scores of men, who stand high on 'the Street' and in the social world, who
have tens of millions that they have filched by 'System' tricks, if not by
legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley's, the trick of selling
short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be
the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen
produce panics and who were applauded by 'the Street' and the press for
their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now
the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful,
they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which
can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am
engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall
have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my
contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic,
the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what
they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I
attempted to bring on a panic.
"Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself
overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and
lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic,
when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his
failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce
a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have
taken place in any event.
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