All this we will do for the public good. We will say that we are
striving for national prosperity. We will proclaim our candidate as
the advance agent of prosperity--until after the election. Then we
will say that prosperity will come with the inauguration. Then we will
say that it will shine out promptly when Congress adjourns and ceases
to menace the national credit. Then we will say that prosperity will
reveal itself when the hot season is over. By this time the hoodwinked
people can be coddled to sleep, or else set to dancing with rumors of
foreign wars. To this end we will have our newspapers carefully
promote our principles and studiously avoid all reference to those
subjects in which the people feel the deepest concern. Finally, we
will omit all these matters from our history of "Wall Street, Past;"
we will proceed to speak of our "Wall Street, Present," and will
explain that it is in a state of "lassitude and expectancy." Indeed
"lassitude and expectancy" is good.

But there is still another yawning chasm in the history of "Wall
Street, _Past_," and that is Mr. Clews's failure to discuss the
transfer of the Treasury of the United States to the custody of the
Street, and the consequent reduction of the Secretary of the Treasury
to the rank of a clerk. This very thing has been most successfully
accomplished. I believe that the Secretary still has an office at
Washington, but that should be closed in the interest of economy and
reform. To do so, we doubt not, would be a strong factor in the
restoration of confidence. Perhaps the Washington office might be left
in charge of a janitor, for it is understood that some official
correspondence is still directed to the old address! The presence of
the Secretary in New York, however, has become so essential to the
proper discharge of his duties that the removal of his residence
thither can only be deferred by an absurd deference to public opinion!

The results of the transfer of this vital function of the national
government have, in the meantime, been so salutary as fully to
vindicate the change. This was shown in 1893-94 when the Street, with
a strong repugnance to investing money in useful enterprises, and
having a prodigious accumulation of funds on hand, concluded that a
sale of Government bonds was necessary for the "national honor." To
this end the managers began to pull the treasury. In that institution
a large sum of gold was stored, wholly without warrant of la