[8] “The Stock Exchange and the Money Market,” “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, November, 1910, p. 567.
[9] If the discovery had then been made that bits of paper could be used as a medium of giving mobility to capital, there would have been a Stock Exchange at Rome eleven centuries before Christ. M. Edmond Guillard’s study of the subject shows that the argentarii (bankers) were then doing business at the imperial city, and that in addition to their central offices they had established branch offices at the Forum, where they gathered daily at a specified hour, together with the merchants, manufacturers, and capitalists, carrying on a business of money-changing in a public market that was, in its essentials, similar to our public financial markets of to-day (“Les Banquiers Atheniens et Romains, trapézites et argentarii,” Paris, 1875 Guillaumin). As the business was introduced into Rome by freed Greek slaves, it is perhaps safe to say that the practice of dealing in public money markets is in reality of still earlier origin. Plautus alludes to the crowd of merchants and bankers in the public square, and many chroniclers record the fact that at the time of Appius Claudius and Publius Sevilius, that is to say, five centuries before Christ, there was a public market in Rome known as the Assembly of Merchants (Collegium mercatorum).
[10] “A hundred years ago the use of the cheque was hardly known even in London, and an English country gentleman would have had infinitely more trouble in making a small investment than would nowadays a remote Australian squatter, or a wheat-grower in the wildest West of Canada. A letter posted to London from a distant village of Saskatchewan in 1910 would arrive with far more certainty, and perhaps not less speed than a letter posted in 1810 from a village in Sutherland or Argyllshire. A penny stamp with a cheque enclosed in a brief letter of instructions to the banker, and the thing is done. But the thrifty Scot of 1810 would have had the utmost difficulty, and great expense as well as risk, in converting a similar amount of cash savings into an interest-bearing security. In 1710 the thing would have been practically impossible. The Bank of England had only just been called into existence, and, in fact, there were no bankers, no brokers, and no Stock Exchange in the modern sense of the word. A man who wished to invest, without personally employing his capital, had practically no choice but to buy property and let it out at a rent, or lend his money on mortgage. Bank of England Stock or National Debt had just begun to be a political speculation for the moneyed Whigs in London. Merchant venturers might risk a large sum in a joint-stock voyage. Otherwise the average Englishman at the beginning of the eighteenth century A. D. was hardly better off for investment than the average Athenian in the age of Pericles, or the average Roman in the days of Cicero.”—“The Stock Exchange,” by Francis W. Hirst, editor of the Economist, Williams and Norgate, London.
[11] Article on “Speculation” in Schonberg’s “Handbuch der Politischen Oekonomie” (Tubingen, 1896–98).
[12] “Scope and Functions of the Stock Market.”—“The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XXXV, No. 3. May, 1910.
[13] Charles A. Conant, “The Uses of Speculation,” Forum (August, 1901).
[14] Suppose for a moment that the stock markets of the world were closed, that it was no longer possible to learn what railways were paying dividends, what their stocks were worth, how industrial enterprises were faring—whether they were loaded up with surplus goods or had orders ahead. Suppose that the information afforded by public quotations on the stock and produce exchanges were wiped from the slate of human knowledge. How would the average man, how even would a man with the intelligence and foresight of a Pierpont Morgan, determine how new capital should be invested? He would have no guides except the most isolated facts gathered here and there at great trouble and expense. A greater misdirection of capital and energy would result than has been possible since the organization of modern economic machinery. “Wall Street and the Country,” by Charles A. Conant, pp. 92–93.—G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1904.
[15] The student who wishes to go more thoroughly into the subject of Stock Exchange usefulness is referred to “The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XXXV, No. 3, May, 1910, Philadelphia. “Some Thoughts on Speculation,” by Frank Fayant, New York, 1909; “The Stock Exchange,” by Francis W. Hirst, London, Williams & Norgate, 1911; “Wall Street and the Country,” by Chas. A. Conant, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904; “Story of the Stock Exchange,” by Chas. Duguid, London, New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1902; “The Stock Exchange, London,” Methuen & Co., 1904; “The New York Stock Exchange,” by Francis L. Eames, New York, 1894; “Der Deutsche Kapitalmarkt,” by Rudolph Eberstadt, Leipzig, Duncker & Humbolt, 1901; “The Stock Exchange,” (London), by C. D. Ingall & G. Withers, Longmans, Green & Co., 1904; “A Simple Purchase and Sale Through a Stockbroker,” by Eliot Norton, Harvard Law Review, Vol. VIII, No. 8; “Stock Exchange Investments; History, Practice, and Results,” London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1900.
[16] The Stock Exchange is an organization of individuals formed for the purpose of listing securities and for facilitating the sale and delivery of stocks.... Through its agency corporations are enabled to sell their shares and get the money capital to conduct their business. The Stock Exchange has come into existence because of a demand for trade facilities that will adjust differences of opinion in reference to future values of corporation securities and give the purchaser some idea of values. (“Modern Industrialism,” by Frank L. McVey, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Minnesota. N. Y., 1904.)
[17] “Principles of Economics,” by Edwin R. A. Seligman, Professor of Political Economy in Columbia University (N. Y., 1905).