STOCK GAMBLING AND EXTRAVAGANCE.
“Money mania,” the recent country-wide speculations may be called. “Stock craze” it has been denominated. But the speculation in stocks, reaching the vast total of nearly $15,000,000 in five days of the second week in May, culminating on the 9th, when from 60 to 80 per cent. was paid for money on call, and Northern Pacific stock climbed from $170 to 1,000 a share, was because it promised to the speculator money. This number of shares was less than one-tenth of the whole number dealt in during the entire year of 1900. “Millions of dollars’ worth of stock passed from one owner to another in an ‘instant,’” says the Christian Advocate. “Immense fortunes have been made. We are informed on good authority that one man made $2,700,000, and is now practically a nervous wreck, trying to get himself in readiness to go to Europe for recuperation. Another acknowledges that he made $750,000.” The Springfield Republican tells us that it was the biggest “gamble” ever known, and that “the craze” “embraced pretty much the whole country.” All classes were in it,—clerks, sewing girls, tailors, waiters, butlers,—people of all sorts and kinds. “Men who have made anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 since election,” says one account, “are almost as common these days in Wall Street as ‘flies are in August.’ Great numbers of people are furiously plunging into the golden flood, bent on a rapid accumulation of wealth. Women throng excitedly some of the brokers’ offices. . . . Clerks and accountants are working eighteen hours a day, and they sleep down town at night, rather than go to their homes, in order to get an early start at the office in the morning. The down-town hotels are crowded these nights to their utmost capacity, solely because of the speculative furor. Some of the rooms have three beds, while cots have been put up in the parlors. Such is the frenzied race for wealth by the short and easy cut of stock gambling.” And many lost their all. Old men and women, poor men and women, hoping to increase their little store by gambling in stocks, were plucked of all their feathers, and left financially naked. “In its demoralizing consequences,” says the last-named journal, “it can only be compared with the operations of a thousand Louisiana lotteries, under which $10,000 prizes are being drawn in all parts of the country, and held up to general view to excite a crazed cupidity among all classes.” And all this breeds extravagance. New York City, it is said, was never living so high. Demand for the most expensive gems and jewelry has not been so great for a long time as in the last quarter year. The restaurants and hotels are full of hilarity, and the choicest wines and costliest luxuries are demanded. The manager of the Hoffman House is thus reported:— For the past four or five months the money which has been in circulation has been simply prodigious. For instance, we have a number of private dining-rooms for the use of persons who wish to give dinner parties. Since the first of January these rooms have been engaged for nearly every night in the week, except Sundays, weeks in advance; and there have been only a few Sundays when they were not in use. That would not strike me as being so particularly remarkable, were it not for the kind of dinners which those leasing the rooms desire. I can remember the time, and it was only a mighty few years ago, when a dinner, given at a hotel or restaurant which cost $10 a plate, was considered a pretty swagger sort of a dinner. But now, a $10-a-plate dinner simply isn’t in it. Just the plain, ordinary dinners cost $15 a plate, and from that up. This, of course, takes no account of the floral decorations and the music. These are all extra, and if you want to know something about the extravagances people are running to in flowers for dinners, go and ask some of the first-class florists. One florist says that he is selling more cut flowers than in all the years of past business: “It is a common thing for us to have a standing order now for enough cut flowers to fill vases in half a dozen rooms in a house every morning. Formerly we got these same orders not more than two or three times a week. In the way of dinner decorations, never have so costly flowers been used in this or any other town as have been used since the first of the year. American Beauty roses used to be considered luxuries. Now, while there is, of course, a demand for them, our customers must have orchids, or quantities of violets or pansies and the like, all of which are floral luxuries at the time of the year when dinner-giving is in vogue.” “There are undoubtedly more stunningly-dressed women in New York to-day than ever before in its history,” says the Republican; “for they naturally go with diamonds, cut flowers, and $20-a-plate dinners. The expensive automobile is gaining a great vogue. Extravagance of the wildest description is the example now set by the commercial metropolis to the country at large. . . .” “Prosperity is glorious—would that every one really shared in it! But the moral effect upon the country of such a spectacle of speculation, gambling, and riotous living as is presented in our financial and commercial capital, in this climacteric of the national fatness, can not be a cause for special congratulation.” And of this the prophet speaks: “Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon My people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the palace shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God; there shall be many dead bodies in every place.” The overabounding extravagance and luxury will be as ephemeral as summer fruit. “And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth; and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die.”