Success Quote by Daniel Drew

A nursery-rhyme couplet that doubles as a scalpel: Daniel Drew turns moral admonition into a street-level warning, compact enough to be memorized and, more importantly, repeated. The sing-song rhythm (“his’n” is doing extra work) makes it feel like folk wisdom rather than a threat from the state. That’s the trick. Drew frames the market not as a realm of innovation or risk-taking, but as a place where ownership is the only sacred doctrine and enforcement is blunt.

The intent is practical: don’t sell what you don’t own. In 19th-century America, that lands in the middle of a live controversy about short selling and stock manipulation, practices that were both common and widely resented. Drew himself was a legendary Wall Street operator, tied to Erie Railroad schemes and the kind of financial engineering that made fortunes while souring the public on financiers. Coming from him, the line reads less like a sermon and more like a knowing aside from someone who understands how easy it is to make money by trading “paper” versions of reality.

The subtext is almost cynical: the system will tolerate plenty of sharp dealing, but it draws a bright line at being caught. “Must buy it back” isn’t repentance; it’s damage control. The alternative is prison, not shame. Drew reduces ethics to settlement. In two lines, he captures a core American tension: markets run on confidence, but the consequences arrive only when confidence breaks and the ledger has to reconcile with the real world.