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The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 By: Henry George Stebbins Noble (1859-) |
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THE NEW YORK
STOCK EXCHANGE IN
THE CRISIS OF 1914
BY
H. G. S. NOBLE
PRESIDENT
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
1915 Copyright, 1915
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
INTRODUCTION
The year 1914 has no precedent in Stock Exchange history. At the
present time (1915), when the great events that have come to pass are
still close to us, even their details are vivid in our minds and we
need no one to rehearse them. Time, however, is quick to dim even
acute memories, and Wall Street, of all places, is the land of
forgetfulness. The new happenings of all the World crowd upon each
other so fast in the financial district that even the greatest and
most far reaching of them are soon driven out of sight. This being the
case, it has seemed to the writer of these pages that some record
should be kept among the brokerage fraternity of what was so great an
epoch in their history, and that this record could best be written
down by one who happened to be very favorably placed to know the story
in its entirety. Of course the archives of the Exchange will always contain the minutes
of Committees and other documentary material embodying the story of
the past, but this dry chronicle is never likely to see the light
except when unearthed by law courts or legislative committees. It
seems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread of
the tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minute
books, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may look
it over. This is not an easy task. To differentiate the interesting and the
essential from the mass of routine material is, perhaps, not very
difficult, but to present this segregated matter in a form that will
not be monotonous is much more of a problem. The proceedings of a
Committee that has been in continuous session must, when written down,
partake of the nature of a diary, and to that extent be tiresome
reading. We shall, therefore, have to ask the indulgence of any one
who happens to look into these pages, and beg him to pass over the
form for the sake of the substance. That the substance itself is of
deep interest goes without saying. It was given to the Stock Exchange
to play a great part in a momentous world crisis, and it must be of
profound interest to know how that part was played. Stock Exchanges are a relatively recent product of modern
civilization, and like new comers in every field they are suspected
and misunderstood. The most complex of all problems are economic
problems, and the functions of Stock Exchanges form a most intricate
part of political economy. It has, consequently, been a noticeable
phenomenon in all contemporary industrial society that the activities
of the stock markets have been a constant subject of agitation and
legislative meddling. Most of this meddling has been based upon
ignorance and misunderstanding, but in a broad view this ignorance and
misunderstanding are excusable owing to the novelty and above all the
great complexity of the factors at work. One of the needs of the time,
therefore, is that the public, and their representatives in the
Legislatures, should be enlightened as fast as possible with regard to
the immensely important uses of these institutions, and to the
operation of their very delicate machinery. The World crisis of 1914 forced upon us an object lesson on the
question of speculative exchanges in general which ought to be of
lasting profit. For years agitators had been hard at work all over the
country urging the suppression of the Cotton Exchanges, and claiming
that they contained gamblers who depressed the price of the cotton
growers' product. In the summer of 1914 the dreams of these agitators
were realized... Continue reading book >>
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This book is in genre |
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Economics/Political Economy |
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