Nov

2

Optimism fulfilled

November 2, 2025 |

The New York Stock Exchange
Its history, its contribution to national prosperity, and its relation to American finance at the outset of the twentieth century
Edmund Clarence Stedman, Editor
Stock Exchange Historical Company
New York, 1905

From the preface:

The present writer remembers the impression left upon an educated Englishman, a well-known publicist, who made a visit to Wall Street some eighteen years ago. He had been taken through the largest commercial structures in the vicinity, and even to the Stock Exchange itself, without giving expression to unusual interest. But on returning to his friend's offices, upon the upper floor of a building in the rear of the Exchange, he saw a sight that instantly gave him a realization of the extent of our peopled territory, and of the meaning of the Stock Exchange as the focus to which all currents of American purpose and energy converge. It was shortly before the time when the wires of New York's electric system were buried, by enactment, out of sight. Through the air, over New Street, hundreds, seemingly thousands, of these wires stretched toward the Exchange. No bird could fly through their network, a man could almost walk upon them; in fact, they darkened the street and the windows below their level. The visitor's host suggested that those going north, west, south were carrying messages to and from scores of inland cities and towns — financial ganglia of this land of national wealth and effort — names of which were mentioned. Certain wires were transcontinental, communicating with the towns of the Pacific States. Others served the uses of Montreal, Toronto and kindred points in the Great Dominion. Finally, the competing ocean cables were of course laden with incessant "arbitrage" and other messages to and from London, Paris and Berlin. This ocular demonstration of the relations of the New York Exchange to the Republic in its entirety, and even to the world overseas, proved almost startling to the English traveller. He asserted that within this central field of financial energy and intercommunication it was impossible not to have the imagination aroused, and the reason convinced of the enormous interests of which Wall Street, through its representative Exchange, is the ceaseless regulator. With philosophic impartiality, he predicted the time when even the largest money centres of the old world would become more or less subsidiary to this dominant market of the Western hemisphere.


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