Clearing House certificates reached its maximum. But the banks had reached their largest deficit in reserve in the first week of November, when it rose to $54,100,000, a prodigious amount, of which the public was in ignorance.

In Boston at the same time your banks had taken out $11,995,000 of their own Clearing House certificates, but this total was never increased. After that the banking situation all over the country was slowly on the mend, but owing to the partial suspension of currency payments by the banks caused by runs and hoarding, inspired by the use of Clearing House certificates, currency and gold commanded a premium in New York ranging from one to five per cent. This premium was current from the time the certificates were first issued till the end of December, 1907. The hoarding of money was, meanwhile, enormous. After that the premium became suddenly a thing of the past, and hoarded money was rapidly deposited with the banks.

It is noteworthy that in the panic of 1873, the New York Clearing House issued only $26,565,000 of certificates, and in the panic of 1893 only $41,690,000. But these figures merely show how very much smaller New York's banking capital, deposits and loans were in those years than they are now.

The throwing out of employment through the effects of the panic of large numbers of men, most of them of foreign birth, resulted in a larger exodus of steerage passengers to Europe than was ever before known, these aggregating 114,078 in the first two months of 1908, while only 50,601 immigrants arrived here during those months. The outward rush commenced in November and it still continues with little abatement. But as a safety valve for unemployed labor it is perhaps to be welcomed. for the time being, as it reduces the ranks of the unemployed and when the labor of these aliens is again in demand they will return as fast as they went. They know on which side their bread is buttered.

Immigration is, however, no longer as necessary to this country as it was in pioneer times. Our aim now should be to

keep out undesirable immigrants, particularly anarchists, Black Hand Italians and Armenians, and rabid socialists who come here to make trouble, and preach doctrines of equality and confiscation, entirely inimical to American institutions and national as well as individual progress.

I now come to the markets for stocks, bonds and speculative commodities, and the recent indiscriminate attack upon them by Mr. BRYAN and others, both in and out of Congress, as hotbeds of what they call gambling.

As one of the oldest members of the New York Stock Exchange, I am the sixth oldest, I think now I can from my long experience, testify to the integrity and high character of its membership, and the strict discipline of that Association over those composing it. Any breach of its rules, any deviation from the line of fair dealing, or anything prejudicial to its interests is promptly investigated and as promptly punished, when proved to the satisfaction of the Governing Committee, by fine, suspension, or expulsion. But it is very rare for a member to be either charged with or found guilty of chicanery of any kind.

It is therefore unjust and outrageous for Mr. BRYAN and others who have denounced the New York Stock Exchange to call it a gambling arena and its members gamblers. They are brokers in a free market, a market open to all the world, and they are ready to receive and execute orders from all the world, and whether or not those orders are for investment or speculative account, it is not for them to enquire. Still less is it for them to discriminate against speculation, when speculative far more than investment dealings are the life of every stock exchange in the world. A stock exchange to have any value.

must be a free market.

Speculation in stocks is no more gambling than speculation in real estate, or merchandise, although different in degree, but there may be excesses in speculation as in everything else. The stock exchange as a body should not however be held responsible for the excesses of individual speculators, or for the dishonesty of men who embezzle in order to get money for the

purpose of speculating. Gas should not be blamed for causing the death of a man who deliberately locks his room door, shuts his windows tight and turns on the gas to die.

Those who know Wall street well, as I do, know how false a view of it Mr. BRYAN and others, including certain members of Congress, have given to the public. If they really had known Wall street well, and had any conscience, they would not have said what they did say. They have misrepresented it grossly and unjustifiably, and in their moralizings upon it they have not reasoned, but ranted.

Some of them have even advocated the entire elimination of the stock exchange. They would thus invite financial chaos. and leave investors, the banks, insurance companies and all other corporate holders of stocks and bonds practically without a market for their securities in which to either buy or sell. This would be putting back the hands of the clock of progress with a vengeance. It would be going back to the wigwam and the canal boat, but of course it would never be tolerated and therefore be impossible.

Yet this slandering and mudslinging campaign by representatives of both the great political parties for political effect is none the less injurious and reprehensible because it can never have any substantial result, much less the destruction of Wall street. It is scandalous abuse of which we may have more before the November election, but it is already high time that it should stop in the interest of truth and justice and the public welfare.

These assailants of the New York stock exchange would also abolish all other stock exchanges and the Chicago Board of Trade, as well as all the other grain and provision exchanges, and all the cotton exchanges in the country that deal in futures. Perhaps they are not aware that the farmers and planters of the West and South derive or can derive great benefit from having a free market for "futures" open to them, for it enables them to sell their crops before they are harvested, if the prices are satisfactory and they want to make sure of them. This applies also to the Coffee Exchange and importers of coffee.

To drive dealings in "futures" from the Cotton Produce and other exchanges, would be to drive them to Canada and Liverpool and London and let the markets there make prices for us, instead of making them for ourselves, all of which shows the absurdity of this clamor against speculation in stocks and speculative commodities. Speculation is thus stigmatized as gambling with no more reason or justice than the inevitable risks of ordinary mercantile trade could be called gambling, for no one can engage in trade of any kind without taking risks.

Now that the storm of the crisis has passed away and the investigation and prosecutions that have taken place have laid bare the corporate evils that were rife among us, including railway rate rebating and various forms of looting and wholesale graft by controlling capitalists, we have come into a purer business atmosphere. Corrupt plundering and law breaking officers of banks and railway, insurance and other large corporations have, in many cases, been exposed and shown the error of their ways, and we have in consequence a higher business morality than we had before we passed through this ordeal of purification. In other words, the house cleaning we have had has done us good and this of itself is a compensation that can hardly be overrated in its future influence. Banks and trust companies and railways, insurance and other corporations have been freed from much. unsound and dishonest management and also loose, grafting and speculative practices and we have in their place that higher moral tone which is safeguarded by greater publicity of accounts. and more rigid official examinations under new and stricter laws than ever before.

Thus temptation to and chicanery and other corporate wrongdoing, and abuses, by those in control of corporations is largely reduced and this is important, for an old proverb tells us that opportunity makes the thief.

Good grounds for an optimistic view of the situation and the future you will all acknowledge can be found in our unequalled and immense natural resources and their uninterrupted development. These and the enterprise of our people and our free

institutions and popular government, which make us all sovereigns in our own right, are national blessings. They fortify our national life, and leave our splendid growth and powers of achievement unchecked; and our wonderful progress in the past. will no doubt be eclipsed by our still greater and grander future Iwith the United States of America the foremost nation in the world.

In all this progressive movement the cotton and other mill industries of New England, and the rest of the country, will share; and in this natural and legitimate expansion, gentlemen, you and your successors may look forward to, and find, the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, as ANDREW CARNEGIE did in Pittsburg.

From a great American object lesson as set by Mr. CARNEGIE, you should all derive a vast amount of encouragement and from hope that ever springs eternal in the human breast. [Applause.]