Brokerage (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Organization Of Exchanges. The New York Stock Exchange grew out of a mere formal agreement of a group of brokers to make uniform charges for their services, and the origin of all other stock exchanges may be explained in much the same way. These associations are merely voluntary organizations for the convenience of the brokers who constitute their membership, and are organized and regulated in much the same way as are private clubs. Produce exchanges, however, are incorporated bodies. To-day there are scores of different exchanges of all kinds scattered over the country. New York and Chicago have rather long lists, and every city of much size and many smaller ones have at least one exchange. The exact form of the title varies somewhat but "exchange '' is the most common form. '' Board of Trade'' is frequently used as well as the term "Bourse," borrowed from Europe, and sometimes we even find the association called "Chamber of Commerce." The names include, too, a pretty wide list of commodities dealt in. Thus we have stock, produce, petroleum, metal, cotton, coffee, sugar and rice, fruit, coal, lumber, and live stock exchanges. New York leads the country as a trading center. Its exchanges stand foremost in security, metal, and coffee dealing, while New Orleans alone challenges their supremacy in cotton. Chicago leads in the grain and provision trade. Such associations have increased in number and membership; they hold a conspicuous place in the world of business; they erect costly buildings for their housing upon prominent sites of great value. But still they are merely voluntary associations of traders, whose common business interests are served by .such organization. The movement is but another illustration of the adage about the strength there is in uni...