The interiors of the buildings are ornate, they are sleek with marble, and quite often beautiful with it. They are well arranged; the skyscraper habit makes for short corridors, and you can always find your man easily (as in the hotels) by the number of his room: thus, if his number is 1201 he is on the twelfth floor, 802 is on the eighth, and 2203 is on the twenty-second; each floor is a ten.
Up to the floors one ascends by means of one of a fleet of elevators, some being locals and some being expresses to a certain floor and local beyond. Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, there is always a man to control them, a station-master of lifts who gives the word to the liftboys. To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there by law]; he is soon seen to be one of a multitude of men in America who "stand over" other men while they do the job.
The unexpected thing in buildings so fine as this, occupied by men who are addicted to business, is that the offices have rather a makeshift air. The offices I saw in America do not compare in comfort with the offices I know in England. There is a bleakness, an aridity about them that makes English business rooms seem luxurious in comparison. I talked of this phenomenon with a friend, instancing one great office, to be met with surprise and told: "Why! But that office is held up as an example of what offices should be like. We are agitating to get ours as good as that." After this I did not talk about offices.
The "Down Town" restaurants bring one vividly back to London. They are underground, and there is the same thick volume of masculinity and masculine talk in them. They are a trifle more ornate, and the food is better cooked and of infinitely greater variety (they would not be American otherwise), but over all the air is the same.
Into the familiar business atmosphere of this quarter the Prince came early. He drove between crowds and there were big crowds at the points where he stopped—at the Woolworth building and at Trinity Church, that stands huddled and dwarfed beneath the basilicas of business. The intense interest of his visit began when he arrived at the Stock Exchange.
The business on the floor was in full swing when he came out on to the marble gallery of the vast, square marble hall of the Exchange, and the busy swarm of money-gathering men beneath his eyes immediately stopped to cheer him. To look down, as he did, was to look down upon the floor of some great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks spaced apart, about which men congregate only to divide and go all ways; these kiosks might easily be booths. The floor itself is in constant movement; it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding about always in unconjectural movements. Groups gather, thrust hands and fingers upward, shout and counter-shout, as though bent on working up a fracas; then when they seem to have succeeded they make notes in small books and walk quietly away. Messengers, who must work by instinct, weave in and out of the stirring of ants perpetually. In a line of cubicles along one side of the Exchange, crowds of men seemed to be fighting each other for a chance at the telephone.
Two of the tremendous walls of this hall are on the street, and superb windows allow in the light. On the two remaining walls are gigantic blackboards. Incessantly, small flaps are falling on these blackboards revealing numbers. They are the numbers of members who have been "called" over the 'phone or in some other way. The blackboards are in a constant flutter, the tiny flaps are always falling or shutting, as numbers appear and disappear, and the boards are starred with numbers waiting patiently for the eye of the member on the floor to look up and be aware of them.
The Prince stood on the high gallery under the high windows, and watched with vivid curiosity the bustling scene below. He asked a number of eager questions, and the strange silent dance of numbers on the big blackboards intrigued him greatly. Underneath him the members gathered in a great crowd, calling up to him to come down on the floor. There was a jolly eagerness in their demands, and the Prince, as he went, seemed to hesitate as though he were quite game for the adventure. But he disappeared, and though the Bears and the Bulls waited a little while for him, he did not reappear. Those who knew that a full twelve-hour program could only be accomplished by following the timetable with rigid devotion had had their way.
From the Stock Exchange the Prince went to the Sub-Treasury, and watched, fascinated, the miracle work of the money counters. The intricacies of currency were explained to him, and he was shown the men who went through mounds of coin, with lightning gestures separating the good from the bad with their instinctive finger-tips and with the accuracy of one of Mr. Ford's uncanny machines. He was told that the touch of these men was so exquisite that they could detect a "dud" coin instantly, and, to test them, such a coin was produced and marked, and well hidden in a pile of similar coins. The fingers of the teller went through the pile like a flash, and as he flicked the good coins towards him, and without ceasing his work, a coin span out from the mass towards the Prince. It was the coin he had marked.