traffic in vendible capital. The manipulationfl carry risk, not so much to the manipulators as such, as to the corporations whose properties are the subject of manipulation; but since the manipulators commonly own but a relatively small proportion of the properties involved or touched by their manipulations, the risks which arise do not fall chiefly on them. To this is to be added, as of prime importance for the whole question, that the manipulators have the advantage of being able, in great part, to foresee the nature, magnitude, and incidence of the risks which they create. Rightly seen, this, of course, goes to say that the increased speculative risk due to the traffic in vendible capital does not fall on that traffic, but on the business enterprise engaged about the output of vendible , goods. The traffic in vendible capital ia not without its speculative risks, but the risks which it creates fall with relatively greater weight upon the business men who are not immediately concerned in this traffic. Indeed, so secure and lucrative is this class of business, that it ia chiefly out of gains accruing, directly and indirectly, from such traffic in vendible capital that the great modem fortunes are being accumulated ; and both the rate and the magnitude of these accumulations, whether taken absolutely or relatively to the total increase of wealth, surpass all recorded phenomena of their kind. Nothing so e£fective for the accumulation
of private wealth is known to the history of human culture.