any reason
compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that
his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling
would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself,
or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for
a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire
at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the
hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly,
where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its
clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account,
the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from
selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange
that the broker in question was about to work Brownley's discovery and he
could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be
taken by others and he could be ruined.

"Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those
acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars,
impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed.
When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock
speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can
no longer be robbed by the 'System.' In leaving you, the Exchange, and
stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say
from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a
soul that has been withered by the 'System's' poison, with a full sense
of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every
one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing
of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by
others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In
accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have
any, with this argument: 'If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed,
no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who
took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others
take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will
fall.'

"The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which
all honest men and women should pray."

Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes s