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Market Speculation in the Muckraker Era: The Popular Reaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Cedric B. Cowing
Cedric B. Cowing
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History At University of Hawaii
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Abstract

In the 1890–1907 period Populist-Progressive protests, public ignorance of the economic functions involved, and obvious abuses in the performance of those functions combined to produce a major peak of adverse opinion. Public protest shaped the course of stock exchange history through subsequent decades and yielded operator prototypes that have become classic Americana.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Winter 1957 , pp. 403 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1957

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References

1 Parker, Carl, “Government Regulation of the Exchanges,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. XXXVIII (Sept., 1911), pp. 444–472Google Scholar. States that passed such laws were: Tennessee (1883); Arkansas, South Carolina, and Texas (1885); Iowa (1886); Michigan (1887); and Missouri (1889).

2 Ibid., North Carolina (1905); Georgia (1906); Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Montana (1908).

3 Ibid., pp. 467–472.

4 Hamlin, C. H., Arena, Vol. XI (Feb., 1895), pp. 413–416Google Scholar.

5 Curtis, William B., “Increase of Gambling and its Forms,” Forum, Vol. XII (Oct., 1891), pp. 281–292Google Scholar. For Curtis see Who Was Who in America, 1897–1942 (1942) Vol I, p. 287Google Scholar.

6 Ibid.

7 Regier, Cornelius C., The Era of the Muckrakers (Chapel Hill, 1932), p. 196Google Scholar.

8 The term “bucket shop” is said to have originated in England c.1820. Street urchins made a habit of draining beer kegs discarded by the public houses. They took these dregs to abandoned shops and there imbibed. The practice was called “bucketing” and their rendezvous, a “bucket shop.” The name was transferred to illicit brokers apparently because they too sought to benefit from sources too small or too unreliable for legitimate brokers to handle. Hill, John, The Gold Bricks of Speculation (New York, 1907), p. 39Google Scholar.

9 Ibid.

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11 Hill, Gold Bricks, p. 39.

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13 Lefevre, Edwin S., Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Garden City, 1923), pp. 26–29Google Scholar. Larry Livingston was the pseudonym Lefevre gave Jesse L. Liver-more, the famous Wall Street “bear.”

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16 Additional states were: Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Virginia, 1908; Kansas, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Tennessee, 1909. Parker, , “Government Regulation,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. XXXVIII (Sept., 1911), pp. 464–467Google Scholar.

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23 Ibid.

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25 His articles afterward appeared in book form: Lawson, Thomas W., Frenzied Finance (New York, 1905)Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., pp. 223–225.

27 Lawson, Thomas W., “The Remedy,” Everybody's Magazine, Vol. XXVII (Oct., 1912, to July, 1913).Google Scholar

28 “Lawson's Remedy,” The Literary Digest, Vol. XLV (Oct. 5, 1912)Google Scholar; “Dr. Lawson's Panacea,” Current Literature, Vol. LIII (Dec, 1912), pp. 647–648Google Scholar. A “blind pool” is one in which the contributors give the manager carte blanche to trade with their funds as he sees fit.

29 Stewart, Robert, “Metropolitan Types — The Stockbroker,” Munsey's Magazine, Vol. XXI (1899), pp. 278–280Google Scholar; Lefevre, Edwin S., “Pike's Peak or Bust,” McClure's Magazine, Vol. XVII (June, 1901), pp. 153–163Google Scholar; Sparling, Earl, Mystery Men of Wall Street (New York, 1930), pp. 105–116, 240–245Google Scholar.

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31 Lawson claimed James R. Keene was very philanthropic. Lawson, Frenzied Finance, p. 80.

32 Marcosson, , “Passing of the Plunger,” Munsey's Magazine, Vol. XLIX (April, 1913), pp. 3–13Google Scholar; Sparling, Mystery Men of Wall Street, pp. 3–44; Lefevre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.