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Trading & Investing

Fifty Years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

Henry Clews combines personal recollection, market history, and practical commentary in this wide-ranging account of Wall Street. The book follows booms, panics, banking practices, and public finance through the eyes of a participant who spent decades inside New York’s financial district.

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First published
1908
Length
340,125 words
Reading time
About 23 hr 38 min
Language
English

About the book

Fifty Years in Wall Street is part memoir, part financial chronicle, and part manual of caution. Clews moves between personal episodes and larger events, describing how credit, confidence, rumor, leverage, and political decisions shaped the market across several turbulent decades.

The book is especially valuable for its close view of nineteenth-century market culture. Bankers, brokers, speculators, railroad promoters, government officials, and ordinary investors appear not as abstractions but as participants in recurring cycles of optimism, pressure, panic, and recovery.

Clews writes with the convictions of an experienced insider, so readers should treat his judgments as arguments rather than neutral rules. Even so, his emphasis on liquidity, reputation, discipline, and the dangers of excessive speculation gives the work lasting historical and practical interest.

About the author

Henry Clews

Henry Clews was a New York banker, financial commentator, and longtime participant in Wall Street. His career placed him near major episodes in American banking, public finance, railroad expansion, and securities trading during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Clews used his experience to write for a broad investing public. His work blends autobiography with market instruction, offering a distinctly personal record of how an established financier understood credit, speculation, institutional trust, and financial crises.

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Themes and ideas

  • Business
  • Capitalists and financiers
  • Speculation
  • Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)

Table of contents

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Show all 91 sections
  1. Chapter I. My Debut in Wall Street.
  2. Chapter II. Wall Street as a Civilizer.
  3. Chapter III. How to Make Money in Wall Street.
  4. Chapter IV. Importance of Business Training.
  5. Chapter V. Personal Honor of Wall Street Men.
  6. Chapter VI. Wall Street During the War.
  7. Chapter VII. More War Reminiscences—british and Napoleonic Designs.
  8. Chapter VIII Foreign Intrigues Against American Liberty.
  9. Chapter IX. Secretary Chase and the Treasury.
  10. Chapter X. the National Banks.
  11. Chapter XI. the New York Stock Exchange.
  12. Chapter XII. “Corners” and Their Effect on Values.
  13. Chapter XIII. the Commodore’s “Corners.”
  14. Chapter XIV. Daniel Drew.
  15. Chapter XV. Drew and Vanderbilt.
  16. Chapter XVI. Drew and the Erie “Corners.”
  17. Chapter XVII. Interesting Episodes in Drew’s Life.
  18. Chapter XVIII. Panics.—their Causes.—how Far Preventable.
  19. Chapter XIX. Old Time Panics.
  20. Chapter XX. the True Story of Black Friday Told for the First Time.
  21. Chapter XXI. Causes of Loss in Speculation.
  22. Chapter XXII. Villard and His Speculations.
  23. Chapter XXIII. Ferdinand Ward.
  24. Chapter XXIV. Henry N. Smith.
  25. Chapter XXV. Keene’s Career.
  26. Chapter XXVI. Our Railroad Methods.
  27. Chapter XXVII. Georgia Repudiation Bonds.
  28. Chapter XXVIII. Andrew Johnson’s Vagaries.
  29. Chapter XXIX. the DIX Convention.
  30. Chapter XXX. Consequences of the Utica (Dix’s) Convention.
  31. Chapter XXXI. Grant’s Second Term.
  32. Chapter XXXII. the Tweed Ring, and the Committee of Seventy.
  33. Chapter XXXIII. Hon. Samuel J. Tilden.
  34. Chapter XXXIV. Commodore Vanderbilt. —How His Mammoth Fortune Was Accumulated.
  35. Chapter XXXV. William H. Vanderbilt.
  36. Chapter XXXVI. “Young Corneel.”
  37. Chapter XXXVII. the Young Vanderbilts and Their Fortunes.
  38. Chapter XXXVIII. the Rothschilds.
  39. Chapter XXXIX. Travers.
  40. Chapter XL. Charles F. Woerishoffer.
  41. Chapter XLI. Women as Speculators
  42. Chapter XLII. Western Millionaires in New York.
  43. Chapter XLIII. Railroad Investments.
  44. Chapter XLIV. the Silver Question.
  45. Chapter XLV. the Labor Question.
  46. Chapter XLVI. an Important Synopsis.
  47. Chapter XLVII. International Significance of the Bartholdi Statue.
  48. Chapter XLVIII Large Fortunes and Their Disposition.
  49. Chapter XLIX. Southern Affairs in Speculation.
  50. Chapter L. Western and Southern Financial Leaders.
  51. Chapter LI. Arbitration.
  52. Chapter LII. New York as a Financial Centre.
  53. Chapter LIII. Earthquake Theories and Wall Street Affairs.
  54. Chapter LIV. August Belmont.
  55. Chapter LV. the Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society Examined.
  56. Chapter LVI. Stock Exchange Celebrities.
  57. Chapter LVII. a Look Into the Future.
  58. Chapter LVIII. Jay Gould.
  59. Chapter LIX. Men of Mark.
  60. Chapter LX. James B. and John H. Clews.
  61. Chapter LXI. a Remarkable Chapter of History.
  62. Chapter LXII. Booms in Wall Street.
  63. Chapter LXIII. a Glimpse Into the Future.
  64. Chapter LXIV. My Christmas Address to Customers Dec. 24, 1906.
  65. Chapter LXV. Edward H. Harriman.
  66. Chapter LXVI. the Ups and Downs of Wall Street.
  67. Chapter LXVII. Recent Wall Street Booms.
  68. Chapter LXVIII. Wall Street’s Wild Speculation, 1900-1904.
  69. Chapter LXIX. Review of the Panic Year, 1903.
  70. Chapter LXX. Leading Wall Street Events Up to the Fall of 1907.
  71. Chapter LXXI. the Great Crisis of 1907.
  72. Chapter LXXII. the Causes of the Crisis of 1907.
  73. Chapter LXXIII. Recent Men of Mark.
  74. Chapter LXXIV. Needed Publicity and Reform in Corporations.
  75. Chapter LXXV. the Monetary Situation and Its Remedies.
  76. Chapter LXXVI. Individualism Versus Socialism.
  77. Chapter LXXVII. Great Wealth and Social Unrest.
  78. Chapter LXXVIII. the Financial Situation.
  79. Chapter LXXIX. Table Showing Dates of Admission of the Members of the New York Stock Exchange.
  80. Chapter LXXX. England and Russia in Our CIVIL War and the War Between Russia and Japan.
  81. Chapter LXXXI. the Crisis of 1907 and Its Causes. Was President Roosevelt to Blame?
  82. Chapter LXXXII. Our Great American Panics from First to Last.
  83. Chapter LXXXIII. Wall Street as It Really Is. a Vindication.
  84. Chapter LXXXIV. The Financial and Trade Situation, Past, Present and Future, Reviewing the Crisis of 1907, with Causes and Remedies.
  85. Chapter LXXXV. American Social Conditions.
  86. Chapter LXXXVI. the Financial and Trade Situation and Prospects.
  87. Chapter LXXXVII. Peace Assurances from Japan.
  88. Chapter LXXXVIII. the Emperor of Japan.
  89. Chapter LXXXIX. the National Corporation Problem.
  90. Chapter XC. Why I Am an American.
  91. Conclusion
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