[116] Although an effort has been made in these pages to avoid complicated Stock Exchange technique, the contango, which is not fully understood in America, requires technical explanation. It may be defined as a double-bargain, in that it consists of a sale for cash of the stock previously bought which the broker does not wish to carry, and a repurchase for the new settlement two weeks ahead, of the same stock at the same price as the sale, plus interest agreed upon up to the date of that settlement.
[117] The methods of transacting business on the London Stock Exchange are admirably stated in condensed form in an article by Walter Landells in the Quarterly Review, July, 1912, pp. 88–109, and I am indebted to his article for many of the foregoing facts, and for this brief summary of London’s booms and crises.
[118] In addition to the authorities quoted in the foregoing chapter, the attention of the reader is directed to the following works having to do with the London Stock Exchange:
Lombard Street, by Walter Bagehot, New York, Chas. Scribner’s, and Sons.
Stocks and Shares, by Hartley Withers, London, Smith Elder, 1910.
Stock Exchange Law and Practice, by W. A. Bewes, London, Sweet & Maxwell, 1910.
Rise of the London Money Market, 1640–1826, by W. R. Bisschop, London, King, 1910.
The Mechanism of the City, by Ellis T. Powell, London, King, 1910.
[119] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, La Régence de l’argent, “Revue des Deux Mondes.” February 25, 1897, pp. 894 and 895.
(M. Leroy-Beaulieu is the elder brother of Paul, the French economist. In 1881 he became professor of modern history at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, and in 1887 was made a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. His fame as a publicist is established.)