Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 236, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1910 — WALL STREET A LONG STREET [ARTICLE]

WALL STREET A LONG STREET

Influence of Great Financial Center la Felt Everywhere in America.

I speak imaginatively, of course, but carefully, says Lincoln Steffens in Everybody’s. Wall street is, not merely a street; neither is it financial limited to the operation of any one city. Wall street is a national institution. It is to American business what Washington, D. C„ is to national politics—the seat of government. And so I use the phrase, as all the world uses it and~as we all use “Washington,” figuratively. By “Wall street” I mean the national American financial system which, having its capital in New York, ramifies all over the United States, and, controlling more and more perfectly money and credit, is governing more and more completely not only the machinery cf organized business, but so much of our political government as big business governs. Nor is that all. -'“Wall street” cut a woman in New York society not long ago for business reasons. It admitted into the “best set” of San Francisco, for the “moral effect,” a family that had knocked in vain until the head of it was “handed down in a swell list of indictments.” It has had 'clergymen silenced, editors discharged, processors dismissed. Judges appointed, United States senators defeated and presidents elected. Organized capital opposes organized labor and trusts have broken up unions, but organized business backs nearly every political organization in power in cities, states and the United States. People don’t realize —it seems to me that Wall men fail themselves to visualize—either the pettiness or the largeness of Wall street. Yet we all know that capitalists and business men who belong to the business system own an influential part of the press and advertise in the rest; they retain the leaders of the bar and awe the who profession; they are the greatest employers of labor and they set the pace for others; they are the*, chief patrons of art, churches, charities and colleges. They dominate the institutions of American society in a broad sense and in a narrow sense they and their families are “society.” I am not finding fault. This thing may be good. I am inclined to think it is. Certainly there is great good in it and undoubtedly some good will come out of it. But it is too big to prejudice and we have had enough both of hatred and adoration of it. My purpose is, if possible, to measure its power and imagine its outline; to trace its ramifications, describe its methods, get hold of its point of view and so comprehend it, not in technical detail, but as one mighty whole.