He has now become a thinking animal; he lives by his wits, and he suffers from the worries incidental to brain work coupled with responsibility. I have just said that nature abhors a vacuum—in his case this especially applies to his mind. Care and worry are not driven away merely because he has made his “round” in 80 strokes—they must be pushed out by something else, something more than mere play or sport per se. What he requires is a new mental interest, not merely to serve as a counter-irritant for the worries of to-day, but as an investment for all the years that are before him. He must have a “hobby” of some sort, no matter what, so long as it is a mental occupation which he does for the love of it—books, pictures, music, postage stamps—anything will do the trick so long as it occupies the mind and is done for fun. We old timers have only to look about us on the Board to see who the really happy men are, the men who are never nuisances. They are the men whose minds are not content with doing nothing.[101]
In the matter of creature comforts, members of the New York Stock Exchange have provided themselves with everything that gentlemen require. Their beautiful building, an architectural masterpiece and one of the city’s ornaments, has often been described; here it is sufficient to say that nothing is lacking in the way of conveniences necessary to the physical ease of the members. Barbers, valets, messengers, and attendants of every description are on duty; a well-equipped hospital room is ready for emergencies; showers and needle-baths, smoking-rooms, lounges, writing-rooms, reading-rooms, coffee-rooms, and a spacious luncheon club, contribute their share to the refreshment of the outer and inner man. The luncheon club, which occupies the whole upper floor, is the last word in culinary perfection. In the lounging-rooms adjoining are all the magazines and periodicals, and the walls are covered with a collection of rare prints of old New York, together with mounted trophies of the hunt presented by sportsmen members. In other days before the Exchange built its present structure the club was housed in modest quarters across New Street and a few non-members of the Exchange were admitted to membership, but now its facilities are taxed to meet the demand, and membership is restricted to the Stock Exchange, although guests are admitted at all hours.
The atmosphere in the city is often trying in the summer months because of the excessive humidity, and extraordinary measures were resorted to in the construction of the building to minimize this unpleasantness on the crowded floor, where the presence of a large number of men in a greater or less degree of physical animation but adds to the general discomfort. To meet this condition an air-cooling plant was provided—the first and the foremost example of its kind in existence, both in point of magnitude and in the exacting demands involved. By means of this remarkable triumph of mechanical skill, outer air at a temperature of say 90° is taken into the basement, eighteen hundred pounds of water (humidity) are squeezed out of it per hour, it is purified and cleansed through many walls of cheesecloth, the temperature is refrigerated down to 60°, and then, after again raising it to a point at which no dangerous results may affect a member passing in and out of the room, it is finally supplied to the great floor and again exhausted by methods that obviate drafts or dangerous currents of any kind. Aside from the members and attendants, the only person having access to the floor is the chief engineer who controls this remarkable air-cooling plant. A wizard in a way, it is curious to watch him threading in and out of the busy crowds, tasting and feeling the air which, under the black art of his necromancy, turns intolerable conditions into others quite delightful.
The history of the New York Stock Exchange has been written many times, and need be but briefly referred to here. Something approaching an organization was effected May 17, 1792, when, under a tree which stood opposite what is now 60 Wall Street, twenty-four “Brokers for the Purchase and Sale of Public Stocks” signed an agreement to charge not less than a commission of ¼ per cent. It was a day of small things; the national debt was but $17,993,000; there was but one bank in the town. Through the fragmentary data that has survived, we learn that occasional meetings of the brokers were held during the next twenty-five years at the old Tontine Coffee House, at Wall and Water streets. In 1817 the formal organization was effected and the meeting-place fixed at the Merchants’ Exchange, later the site of the Custom House, and now the property of the National City Bank. In 1853 the Stock Exchange moved to Beaver Street and in 1865 to its present situation. The “Open Board of Brokers,” a rival organization, was absorbed in 1869, and ten years later the “Gold Board” also joined forces with the parent body.
The development of the New York Stock Exchange in its early days was but a record of the country’s growth, and this in turn depended upon speculation. It was, indeed, speculation such as the world had never witnessed. How our western borders were extended as the railroads pushed onward; how trade was stimulated throughout christendom by the discovery of gold in California; how the national debt expanded at the time of the Civil War; and how, after the war, construction went ahead at tremendous pace—all these served to fan the flames of adventure and enterprise, which are the bases of speculation. The panics of 1837, 1857, and 1873, severe enough to give pause to another and less vigorous nation, seem in the retrospect to have been but starting points for a fresh development of the national spirit—a spirit which owes to speculation the extension of frontiers, the bridging of waters, the unlocking of mountains, and the transportation of wealth. In this splendid work of conquering a continent the Stock Exchange has kept pace with the march of industry. It has supplied the one great central market for the expression of the country’s progress as measured by the country’s securities, and it will continue to do so as long as an evergreen faith in America exists among its people.
The Stock Exchange is often defined as the nerve-centre of the world, and, just as every happening of importance finds an instant effect on the market, so members instinctively apply to current events habits of close analysis and nice discrimination. A failure at Amsterdam may result in liquidation in Atchisons, long a favorite of Dutch investors; prolonged drought in the Argentine may increase our foreign shipments of grain; a great engineering project, like the Assouan Dam, may lead to handsome contracts for American steel-makers; any fluctuation in rates of foreign exchange must be watched carefully to see if exports or imports of gold are impending; if a rich man dies possessed of large amounts of certain securities, sellers must be critically observed for evidences of liquidation by the heirs; speeches in Congress or in Parliament, or the unguarded utterances of statesmen, must be weighed and measured for their effect on the public mind; a great fire may lead to selling of investments by insurance companies; a revolution in Mexico may imperil American investments there; if there are political disturbances in the Balkans, the continental Bourses may be frightened; every move of the great foreign banks must then be watched closely, for the bankers to-day are the war-lords of creation, and so every event of importance the world over makes its impression on the Stock Exchange barometer.
What is going on in the Transvaal or in Alaska, the latest outbreak in China, the areas of barometric pressure in the grain country, the ravages of the boll-weevil, the market in pig iron, the latest labor difficulty, the tendencies of Socialism, the cost of living, the outgivings of our law-makers—a knowledge of all these and many similar matters is a necessary part of the stockbroker’s trade, and serves to keep his mental activities considerably above the dull level of mediocrity. Naturally this sort of occupation gives a zest to life, and makes impossible the sedentary dry-rot which the impatient broker sometimes thinks is upon him. At any rate no Sherman Law can be invoked to prevent him from learning all there is to know about men and affairs; and just as he becomes trained in habits of inquiry, and proficient in using facts as stepping-stones to conclusions, so he becomes a valuable and useful member of the community.
Critics in what may be termed the impressionist school—accustomed to a free, instantaneous, and often meaningless handling of their subject—are prone to condemn the Exchange because the action of the market when large reforms in business are impending seems to imply hostility to those reforms on the part of members. This may be typical modern impressionism, but it is all wrong. If the market declines when, for example, a large corporation finds itself at odds with the law, the downward tendency of the securities affected is the result of natural laws with which stockbrokers have nothing to do. They are but agents. Ten thousand owners of securities throughout the land may simultaneously become alarmed and sell—a familiar psychologic phenomenon which depresses prices—but to say that this result expresses the hostility of the Stock Exchange to the enforcement of the Anti-Trust Law is nothing less than an evidence of critical strabismus.
The men for whom I presume to speak, far from being hostile or indifferent to the call of revitalized business morality, are quite as deeply imbued with the potent spirit of business reform as are the men who make the country’s laws. Careful, well-considered legislation that broadens and deepens the channels of American development, that provides adequate supervision and such publicity as will guard against selfish perversion, is welcomed with gratitude by the Stock Exchange. Any thinking man ought to see at a glance that the very object of the Exchange’s existence is benefited by such laws, and prospers with their enforcement. The Cordage Trust, the Salt Trust, the Bicycle combination and the Hocking Coal episode are still bitter memories on ’Change; any law that will prevent a recurrence of these and kindred calamities is a law that strengthens the hands of every member and gives him fresh courage.
It would be difficult to find anywhere a more intelligent and interesting group of men than the members of the New York Stock Exchange. Some of them are men of peculiar personal charm, others are distinguished for especial ability in various ways, others are men with hobbies, nearly every one knows something that is worth knowing, and, what is better, talks of what he knows in the manner of culture. Given an idle hour with a wish to learn, and every dip of the net into the intellectual waters of this gathering brings up some new and delightful specimen to amuse and instruct.