buy, and thus preventing capital from lying unused, or remaining
inconvertible at need, he earns all that his business yields him by the
substantial services which he renders.

*The legitimate business of the merchant and the broker is contingent, as
we have seen, on fluctuations in the market*, and he who has the sagacity
to foresee these fluctuations and the enterprise to prepare for them,
derives from them advantage to which he is fairly entitled. But it is
precisely at this point that the stress of temptation rests, and the
opportunity presents itself for dishonesty in ways of which the laws take
no cognizance, and on which public opinion is by no means severe. The
contingencies which sagacity can foresee, capital and credit can often
create. Virtual scarcity may be produced by forestalling and monopoly.
When there is no actual dearth, even famine-prices may be obtained for the
necessaries of life by the skilful manipulation of the grain-market. So
too, in the stock-market, bonds and shares, instead of being bought or
sold for what they are worth, of actual owners and to real purchasers, may
be merely gambled with,--bought in large amounts in order to create a
demand that shall swell their price, or so thrown upon the market as to
reduce their price below their real value, and all this with the sole
purpose of mutual contravention and discomfiture. By operations of this
kind, not only is no useful end subserved, but the financial interests and
relations of the community are injuriously, often ruinously, deranged;
while not a few private holders of stock have their credit essentially
impaired by a sudden fall of price, or by the inflation of nominal value
are led into rash speculations.

In the cases cited it may be seen how closely *the right abuts upon the
wrong*, so that one may over-pass the line almost unconsciously. Yet it is
believed that a man may determine for himself on which side of the line he
belongs. The department of business, or the mode of transacting business,
which cannot by any possibility be of benefit to the community, still
more, that which in its general course is of positively injurious
tendency, is essentially dishonest, even though there be no individual
acts of fraud. He really defrauds the public who lives upon the public
without rendering, or purposing to render any valuable return; and if
there be any profession or department of business to which this
description applies, it should be