Wall Street 1929 Part 1
HOW quickly indeed do we lose the feverish faiths and passions of our fathers. The memory of the average American is short, and shorter still the span of his conscience. In this it would seem he differs quite sensibly from the elephant. His capac-ity for sustained hatred is very largely modified by its immediate convenience.
We glance at Wall Street. It was only a few years ago— within the life times of middle-aged men—that Wall Street, a spicy blend of robust individuals, was a target for the nation’s most virulent oratorical sharp-shooters.
Were the Balkans to steam a bit, measles to break out in Kansas, a bank or two to close in North Carolina, a moderate scarcity of money to develop, and at once the stalwart and often self-appointed paladins of public conscience poised their lances and charged, dialectically, into the little winding street that runs off Broadway.
Wall Street! Festering place of our national ailments, breeding place of dastardly, but legal skullduggery. There dwelt the Morgans, the Goulds, the Carnegies, huge, bloated figures with dollar signs on their waistcoats and widows’ scalps on their belts.
By reason of the scorching, quasi-legendary prejudices accumulated by all respectable people north of Fulton Street and west to the Golden Gate, Wall Street stood for a good part of what was detestable upon the American financial scene; and the men who moved there were carnivores of the more loathsome sort.
But that was yesterday, as the horse car, the corset and the stocking bank were yesterday. Wall Street then was just Wall Street—a darksome alley at the foot of Trinity Church, in whose beneficent shadow millionaires scuttled railroads, the government, the public when they could, and occasionally other millionaires.
Source: The Outlook, 18 September 1929
Related posts:
- Wall Street 1929 Part 2
- Wall Street 1929 Part 7
- Wall Street 1929 Part 6
- Wall Street 1929 Part 8
- Wall Street 1929 Part 4
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