n
entrusted with investing the funds of widows and children. From such
sources flow the rills that make the mighty rivers of stock enterprises,
so that, having gathered up the spare cash of the shopkeepers and the
annuitants, their bursting makes wide havoc.

Goodman Thompson's simple skill and joy are to gain five cents here, ten
there, a dollar yonder; three customers have bought at nine o'clock
to-day, at eleven the sales number fifteen, at noon no fewer than two
dozen; whereas at midday yesterday they were only twenty-three. Brooding
over these statistics, worthy Thompson fills up the day, the year, the
lifetime in modest local glory, until the name of John Thompson, grocer,
is taken from his door and put upon his coffin-plate, and John
Thompson's son continues the trade in his stead. Absorbed, I say, in
such details, some men seem strangely careless what the gross of their
gains is, or how secured--their pleasure is "doing business" rather than
growing rich, and equal fortunes by bequest would hardly give them the
same comfort; others, and the majority, are not so careless, but are as
surprisingly stupid, incautious, and gullible in investing their daily
gains as they are sharp and shrewd in getting them. That is why they put
their trust in treacherous princes of finance and railroad kings; that
is why sharpers of good moral character in savings and insurance
companies make many victims. It is wonderful how many tradesmen, subtle
and sagacious in their callings, thrive in the hard task of driving
bargains, only to lose their earnings to palpable knaves, or else by
making hap-hazard investments. Their faculty of accumulation seems like
that of the bee or the ant, good only to a given point, and within the
use of given methods; it seems to fail when sober judgment on
speculative fevers is called for.

But the hard times have temporarily taught first, caution; next,
economy. Caution unluckily has run to suspicion, while economy has
issued in a dearth of employment: thus the correctives applied to hard
times have perpetuated them. People are buying not only less, but
sometimes at second hand, so that every trade suffers--unless it be that
of the coffin-makers; I never knew anybody who wanted a second-hand
coffin. The economy that America usually needs is perhaps less that of
refraining from buying than that of turning things to account. The man
who needlessly cuts down his expenses is hardly so praiseworthy as the
on