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t attention and be unsuitable for those who object to notoriety) or entering on turf speculations (still more unpleasantly conspicuous in their method). I know not that at the worst gambling-hells in the bad old times of the Georges fortunes (and, what is worse, not fortunes alone, but competencies and pittances) could be more readily squandered than by the various forms of speculation in stocks now made of easy access and convenient procedure for all classes of our people--for men, for women, and even for those who are little more than children.
Speculation on the Stock Exchange has, of course, been always a recognized method of gambling. In such speculation as in the system now invitingly offered to all classes there was often, if not generally, very little money behind the speculations, compared with the amount actually supposed to be invested in the various
transactions. (I use the word ' supposed' in an entirely conventional sense, for in Stock Exchange speculations nothing is supposed to be actually invested, though such and such amounts of stock are named as bought or sold.) A speculator need be prepared only to pay the difference between the value of the stock he is supposed to have bought or sold at the beginning of the time-bargain and its diminished or increased value when the time expires. Thus a man shall nominally buy 10,000l. in certain stocks at, we will say, 9,927/., which at the end of the time for which the shares are supposed to have been bought, shall be worth only 9,811/.; in that case, apart from brokerage or commission, he loses 116/. on the transaction. Or, if he had sold stock at 9,927/., nominally (not really possessing any such amount), and its value rose to 10,033/. at the time for which the bargain was entered on, then he would lose 106/. It is only (as a rule) some such proportion as this of the large sum bought or sold that he will actually lose if unfortunate, or gain if he has luck, on a transaction which has such imposing dimensions.
The system, however, by which gambling in stocks is now made accessible to all is more inviting than the system of time-bargains.
By the time-bargain system a man could not tell how much he was risking, any more than he could tell how much he might gain. When settling time came he might have won much or little, or he might have lost little or much, on any particular speculation. The probable gains and the probable losses, apart
from special knowledge or supposed knowledge of the chances of rise or fall in price, were evenly balanced.
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