Transcriber's Note
Every effort has been made to replicate this text asfaithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and otherinconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious erroris noted at the end of this ebook.
THE NEW YORK
STOCK EXCHANGE IN
THE CRISIS OF 1914
BY
H. G. S. NOBLE
PRESIDENT
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 thepresent time (1915), when the great events that have come to pass arestill close to us, even their details are vivid in our minds and weneed no one to rehearse them. Time, however, is quick to dim evenacute memories, and Wall Street, of all places, is the land offorgetfulness. The new happenings of all the World crowd upon eachother so fast in the financial district that even the greatest andmost far-reaching of them are soon driven out of sight. This being thecase, it has seemed to the writer of these pages that some recordshould be kept among the brokerage fraternity of what was so great anepoch in their history, and that this record could best be writtendown by one who happened to be very favorably placed to know the storyin its entirety.
Of course the archives of the Exchange will always contain the minutesof Committees and other documentary material embodying the story ofthe past, but this dry chronicle is never likely to see the lightexcept when unearthed by law courts or legislative committees. Itseems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread ofthe tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minutebooks, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may lookit over.
This is not an easy task. To differentiate the interesting and theessential from the mass of routine material is, perhaps, not verydifficult, but to present this segregated matter in a form that willnot be monotonous is much more of a problem. The proceedings of aCommittee that has been in continuous session must, when written down,partake of the nature of a diary, and to that extent be tiresomereading. We shall, therefore, have to ask the indulgence of any onewho happens to look into these pages, and beg him to pass over theform for the sake of the substance. That the substance itself is ofdeep interest goes without saying. It was given to the Stock Exchangeto play a great part in a momentous world crisis, and it must be ofprofound interest to know how that part was played.
Stock Exchanges are a relatively recent product of moderncivilization, and like new comers in every field they are suspectedand misunderstood. The most complex of all problems are economicproblems, and the functions of Stock Exchanges form a most intricatepart of political economy. It has, consequently, been a noticeablephenomenon in all contemporary industrial society that the activitiesof the stock markets have been a constant subject of agitation andlegislative meddling. Most of this meddling has been based uponignorance and misunderstanding, but in a broad view this ignorance andmisunderstanding are excusable owing to the novelty and above all thegreat complexity of the f