“There are three types on Wall Street,” goes an old aphorism, “bulls, bears, and pigs; and the pigs always get slaughtered.” This cautionary warning was intended for those in the financial services industry, to ward off the ever-present temptation to greed. But Steve Fraser shows in his new book, “Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life” (HarperCollins, 683 pages, $29.95), that the public at large has been unafraid at times to get down into the trough.

Over the last two centuries, Wall Street has become more metaphor than physical place. These days, well-heeled hedge-fund managers in Greenwich, Conn., can refer to themselves as part of “the Street,” even if they have never ventured down to the cramped district where the modern American economy began. Even after September 11, 2001, and the dot-com bust caused many businesses to relocate and many imposing homes of Wall Street’s investment banks and brokerage houses to be converted into adult dormitories for the newly graduated, its grip on the American imagination remains as large as ever.

“Every Man a Speculator” is not intended to be a history of Wall Street itself, although along the way we get an account of the merchants’ meetings under the buttonwood tree in the 18th century, near where the Stock Exchange now stands, as well as thumbnail sketches of the winners and losers, the regulators and shady operators, who have made the street what it is today. As his subtitle indicates, Mr. Fraser is more concerned with how the country has perceived the volcano of activity erupting from that small strip of land in Lower Manhattan.

In doing so, he probes what he calls the “deep ambivalence and cultural warfare” that has defined the country’s relationship with Wall Street. He traces the major conflicts and scandals that have defined the nation’s attitude toward Wall Street: The seemingly uncontrollable cycles of bubble and depression during the 19th century, the rise of the first great financial fortunes, the “money trust” of the House of Morgan and the other major banks with their attendant political scandals, the corruption that lead to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, the confrontation between the New Deal and Wall Street’s Old Guard, the mergers mania of the 1980s, the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

In treating each of these subjects, we see the ambivalence Mr. Fraser identifies. On the one hand, condemnation of the rampant greed, exploitation, and corruption of politics and social life that has exuded from Wall Street is as old as the Republic itself. On the other hand, the Street remains the most prominent symbol of the American Dream of success and financial stability, and it has been the prime engine of the nation’s phenomenal economic growth.

While the modern stock market emerged from those merchant gatherings about the time of the American Revolution, the real story does not get under way until the pressures of the industrial revolution demanded a constant flow of capital. The Founders, certainly, were of two minds about market speculation. Jefferson and Madison were highly suspicious of the financial modernization proposed by Hamilton in his influential 1791 “Report on the Public Credit.”

To the Virginians, Hamilton’s plan that the new national government should assume the war debts of the states and Continental Congress was an invitation to fraud and, moreover, would place the new nation in a disreputable alliance with the forces of finance rather than those of manufacturing or agriculture, which were considered more appropriate economic pursuits for a republic. Hamilton won that battle, but the intellectual heirs of Jefferson and Madison continue to fight to the present day.

This book has an unmistakable anti-Wall Street air, and sometimes Mr. Fraser’s criticisms exceed his explanations. He repeatedly mentions speculation, but without defining the term or explaining how the definition changed over time in the public’s imagination. Betting on a company is not necessarily a bad thing, but betting other people’s money without telling them is quite another. The real frauds – the “pools” made infamous by Joseph Kennedy Sr., the Enrons and Global Crossings – are not sufficiently distinguished from aggressive positions.

Mr. Fraser notes that the history of Wall Street is often one of sons killing their professional fathers, as new technologies and hard-driving financial wizards unseat then-prevailing orthodoxies. He does not, however, extend this insight into the constant reshuffling of Wall Street’s population into a more general reflection on success and the ephemeral nature of financial power. Laying beneath his account of the Wall Street titans is a conviction that the “ruling class” has remained the same and is still up to its old tricks in deceiving the populace with an ever-new set of get rich quick schemes.

This is not exactly true, and certainly the last 30 years have belied the view of Wall Street fat cats as Republican stalwarts; plenty of bankers live in the 10021 and 10022 zip codes, which outstripped just about everywhere else in contributions to John Kerry. Further, Mr. Fraser gives some, but not much, credit to the Street’s real success at giving generations of young men (and, more recently, women) a shot at financial stability based simply on talent, effort, and hard work. Wall Street is still one of the very few places where someone can do well (indeed, very well) and suffer no stigma because of a lack of education or pedigree.

Yet the inequalities created by the system of global markets of which Wall Street is the center is real, and the emphasis on following profits for the shareholders, have oftentimes led to an indifference to the common good. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has shown that anti-Wall Street rhetoric can still resonate, even in a nation whose citizens are ever more tightly bound into the world of finance, through mutual funds, 401(k) plans, and – if President Bush has his way – private Social Security accounts.

The tension between finance as the death knell for a nation of free citizens and as the only sure hope for progress remains at the center of reflection on American society, and “Every Man a Speculator” certainly provides an entertaining introduction to that debate.