Opinion; simply opinion. In all their politics, religion, and social ethics, men are essentially imitative in their beliefs. Now money being as sensitive as any species of morality is very quick to embrace popular belief without stopping to consider whether it be sound or not. Indeed, that it is the popular belief is sufficient; for this alone will send securities up or pull them down. And the worst feature about all this is that the people do not buy and sell stocks on the intrinsic value of the mine; they care nothing about such value, do not take it into consideration scarcely, but gamble to-day on what will be the price of shares to-morrow.
The rise and fall in stocks may sometimes indicate the demand and supply, which again are governed by the disposition of men to purchase more than intrinsic value or change of condition justify. If many persons at the same time seek to buy large quantities of a stock it is sure to advance; if they all at one time wish to sell it is sure to go down. And yet the mine may be twice as valuable when it depreciates as when it appreciates.
Hard times, commercial collapses, monetary crises are offcener the result of apprehension than of a real cause. When every one says times are good and acts accordingly, investing, improving, circulating his money, that alone will make business and prosperity. But as a rule it is safe to say of stock-boards, buildings, and the mass of wealth heaped up by bonanza men and stock-jobbers, that they all are but the crystallizations of crime. To their dearest friends who inquired of them as to their fortune, they were false oracles, ready to sacrifice heaven, if they ever had any chance there, in order to fill their pockets. They would cheat, mother, brother, and I have even known of a man giving his wife money with which to gamble in stocks, simply for the pleasure of beating her out of it. Meanwhile, into all sorts of
