"Instrument of Service"

Conservative Wall Street brokers last week were flabbergasted by a spirited defense of stock trading which, to many, signified a major sociological shift. Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who could speak for a vast rural constituency, had declared stock trading on thin margin was not gambling, was therefore not immoral. One reason for his vigorous declaration in behalf of Wall Street stock business was that he himself had been caught playing the market through a bucket-shop firm, now closed.

Declared Bishop Cannon: "I had been brought up with the general idea of country and small town people that all trading in Wall Street stocks was gambling. . . .

"All trading contains some elements of chance. . . . Elements of chance do not necessarily indicate gambling. . . . The throwing of dice, shooting of craps, the purchase of lottery tickets are all clearly gambling, for there is no element of skill or intelligence involved. Chance and skill enter into card playing, chance and knowledge into horse racing. . . . Purchase of lots in a new community is partly based on chance and partly on knowledge.

"Gambling on the stock market is not different from gambling in other business transactions. The purchase and quick resale of stocks is not any more gambling than the purchase and quick resale of lots. . . . The amount of margin upon which a man trades does not determine the gambling element. ... A man can buy stock for a small cash payment . . . and there is no reason to call him a gambler because he sells the stock shortly after at a profit. ... If the trading in stocks . . . is immoral, then the church should eliminate from her membership the heads of stock exchange houses, clerks, bookkeepers . . . the men and women who buy and sell stock.

"I have never loved money for its own sake. ... I have tried to make money that it might be an instrument of service. . . ."