STORY OF WALL STREET

Evening Star, Issue 20980, 19 December 1931, Page 9

STORY OF WALL STREET

‘The Story "f Wall ! ro:'i/ bRobert. Irving Warshow was reviewed by John S. Steele in the ' -m-i .... Times’ recently. He wrote “Where once wandered a few amiable families of stray pigs, there are now herded together the men who pull the strings that move the world.” This is the opening sentence of one of the chapters of Warshow’s exceedingly interesting book. The volume is not an ambiguous one. In a very slight mould of history it tolls pleasantly and discursively the story of the growth of the New York Stock Exchange from a casual meeting of auctioneers under a buttonwood tree to the great exchange which now dominates the finance of two continents. The book, however, is rather a series of sketches of the great financial figures of America from the days when pigs wandered down what is now Wall street to the present, than a serious history of financial growth. All the great figures—some of_ them now traditional—are to bo met in Mr Warsbow’s pages. Socialists .will see

an ironic meaning in the fact that one of the earliest residents of Wall street was Captain William Kidd. Ho had his homo at No. 56 in the days when he was a respectable slave trader and before he took to sea piracy. “Wall street,” in tho modern term, dates from just after the American Revolution. When Alexander Hamilton organised tho finances of the infant republic a demand for facilities for trading in its securities sprang up, and a group of auctioneers began to bold daily meetings under a buttonwood tree. Hero tho first markets were made. Soon the inconvenience of this outdoor meeting place began to be felt, and tbo auctioneers took a room in John Simmons’s tavern on Wall street. From this beginning Mr Warshow chronicles a steady growth until tho great mart of to-day is reached. GIANTS OF THE STREET. Marching through the pages are the figures of tho great American speculators and entrepreneurs. The first titan is Jacob Little, who invented tho “short” sale. He was a worthy spiritual descendant of Captain Kidd, a pure financial pirate, who made four fortunes and died bankrupt. He was

followed by Daniel Drew, also a pirate of finance, who died poor, and whose epic light with Commodore Vanderbilt is still one of the stories of the street. Jay Gould, Jay Cooke, Jim Keene, Cyrus Field, John D. Rockefeller, both the Morgans, Hill and Harriman, Carnegie, Frick and Schwab, and Ford, Rascob, the Fishers, and other giants of to-day, all get their share of Mr Warshow’s book and add to its interest. One of tho most interesting features of tho book is that it points out that American stock trading and speculation bemm with transportation—railways and steamboats. Then came the era of great industrial development and transportation for a time took a back seat. The Vanderbilts and Drews gave place to Carnegies and Fricks. To-day the wheel has swung full circle, and transportation is again the feature of American speculation, but the motor t . n v lias—and perhaps before long the airplane will have ousted tho railroad and steamboat ns market leaders. But tho banker to-day is king. In the early davs of Wall street lie was secondary to the builder. To-day Morgan runs to a degree of which the original Vanderbilt and Astor never .dreamed.