Men who realise these facts will not, therefore, grumble overmuch at bad times.  They will, at least, have had the sense to see that those times were bound to come, and have refused to believe that they had entered into a perpetual paradise of high prices.  In this respect free will makes the individual superior to the alternations of the market.  He, at least, is not compelled to be always either exalted or depressed.  If he cannot be the master of the market, he is, at least, master of his own fate.

How, then, should men deal with the alternate cycles of flourishing and declining trade?  There is a celebrated dictum, “Sell on arising market, buy on a falling one.”

That man will be safest who will reject this time-worn theory, or will only accept it with profound modifications.  The advice I tender on this subject is as applicable to Throgmorton Street as it is good for Mincing Lane.  The danger of the dictum is that it commits the believer to rowing for ever against the tide.

Let us take the case of buying on a falling market.  That a man should abstain from all buying transactions while the market is falling is an absurd proposition.  But it is none the less true in the main that such a course is a mistaken one.  The machinery of his industry must, of course, be kept in motion, or it will rust and cease to be able to move in better times.  But it is unwise to embark on new enterprises and commitments when commerce, finance, and industry are all stagnant.  And very frequently buying on a falling market means just this.

It is like sowing in the depths of winter seeds which would mature just as well if they were sown in March.  No; it is when the tide has definitely turned that new enterprises should be undertaken.  The iron frost is then broken, and the sower may go out to scatter in the spring-time seeds which will bring in their harvest.  To buy before the turn is to incur the cost of carrying stocks for many unnecessary months.

The converse of the proposition is to sell on a rising market.  Certainly.  Sell on a rising market, but do not stop selling because the market ceases to rise.  A great part of the art of business is the selling capacity and the organisation of sales, but to carry out a preordained system of selling on an abstract theory is mere folly.  To cease selling just because the market is not rising at a given moment, and to wait for a better day—­which may not dawn—­is to burden a firm unduly with the carrying of stocks and commodities.

There is a saying in Canada, “Go, while the going is good.”  The phrase—­an invitation to sell—­finds its origin in the state of the roads.  When the winter is making, the roads are hard and smooth for sleighing, and are kept so by the continual fresh falls of snow, and you can speed swiftly over the firm surface.  But when the winter is breaking, the falls of snow cease, and the sleigh leaps with a crash and a bump over great