ly vouch for
the correctness of the information--that there is no short selling on
one nowadays fairly important Stock Exchange,--that of Tokyo, Japan.
You will have seen in the papers that when President Wilson's peace
message (or was it the German Chancellor's peace speech?) became known
in Tokyo, the Stock Exchange there was thrown into a panic of such
violence that it had to close its doors. It attempted to reopen a
couple of days later, but after a short while of trading was again
compelled to suspend.

Assuming my information to be correct, you have here an illuminating
instance of cause and effect.

Short selling does become a wrong when and to the extent that the
methods and intent of the short seller are wrong.

The short seller who goes about like a raging lion [or bear] seeking
whom he may devour; he who deliberately smashes values by dint of
manipulation or artificially intensified selling amounting in effect to
manipulation, or by spreading alarm through untrue reports or even
through merely unverified rumors, does wrong and ought to be punished.

[Sidenote: _Short selling Is it justifiable?_]

Perhaps the Stock Exchange authorities are not always alert enough and
thorough enough in running down and punishing deliberate wreckers of
values and spreaders of evil omen; perhaps there is altogether not
enough energy and determination in dealing with the grave and dangerous
evil of rumor mongering on the Stock Exchange and in brokers' offices.
But after all even Congress, with the machinery of almost unlimited
power at its hand, does not always seem to find it quite easy to hunt
the wicked rumor-mongers to their lairs and subject them to adequate
punishment.

Yet the unwarranted assailing of a man's good name is a more grievous
and heinous offence than the assailing, by dint even of false reports,
of the market prices of his possessions.

I need hardly add that the practices to which I have above referred are
equally wrong and punishable when they aim at and are applied to the
artificial boosting of prices as when the object is the artificial
depression of prices.

Does the Public Get "Fleeced"?

Question:

_We hear or read from time to time about the public being fleeced.
There is a good deal of smoke. Isn't there some fire?_

Answer:

If people do get "fleeced," the fault lies mainly with outside
promoters or unscrupulous financiers, over whom the Stock Exchange has
no effective contr