entions over eighty speculative companies that rose with the South Sea
bubble and were all crushed in a bunch by the privy council: one, a
company for getting silver out of lead; another, for developing
perpetual motion; a third, for insuring householders against losses by
servants--capital, $15,000,000; a fourth, "a company for carrying on an
undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is"--capital,
$2,500,000 in 5,000 shares of $500 each, on $10 deposit per share, which
deposit nearly a thousand persons actually paid on the first half day
the books were opened, so that before night the rascally manager was off
with $10,000 booty. Besides the matured projects, many companies
existing only on paper were able to sell "privileges to subscribe," when
formed, at $200 or $300 each; for in that day of manias people in Great
Britain paid premiums for the first chance to put their money into
companies for freshening salt water, extracting oil from sunflowers,
buying forfeited estates, capturing pirates, insuring children's
fortunes, fattening hogs, fishing for wrecks, and importing jackasses
from Spain--which last was surely bringing coals to Newcastle. As for
such really solid enterprises as the South Sea bubble, their shares rose
to a thousand per cent, above par.

Perhaps another South Sea bubble could not easily be blown; the Darien
canal will hardly excite a fever of speculation like William Paterson's
Darien project of one hundred and eighty years ago, for which prayers
were offered in the Edinburgh churches; we are not likely to see a
Mississippi scheme of the sort which caused cooks to struggle with
courtiers for places in the Rue de Quinquempoix to buy John Law's
shares, while office rents in that stock-jobbing thoroughfare rose from
five hundred to sixty thousand livres a year. But our late American
experience shows how swift men are to trust their hard-earned gains to
corporate enterprises simply on the reputation of the managers.
Insurance frauds and railroad wreckings thrive on the trustfulness of
professional men and the narrow scope of tradesmen. The latter find
sufficient occupation in the little gains of each day, and often are
puzzled how to employ the surplus. To spend it would be unthrifty; to
roll it in a napkin, bad stewardship; they are apt to be caught by the
popular stock companies or by some scheme of speculation. These
glittering prizes also attract sapient "men of business" who have bee