The New Student's Reference Work/Wall Street

Wall Street. A street in New York City extending from Broadway to East River following the line of the early city-wall across Manhattan Island. It at present is the center of financial operations in the United States. The term Wall Street is commonly used to designate the community of financial interests located there, including among others the stock exchange; produce, cotton, coffee and consolidated exchange, the United States subtreasury, assay office and custom house, the New York clearing house, a multitude of national and state banks, trust companies, private banking firms, import and export houses, dealers in commercial paper and promoters, representatives of railroad and industrial corporations and vast private estates; the curb market and hundreds of corporation lawyers and others who have close relations with security markets. There railroad and industrial corporations are organized and financed, stock and bond securities of all kinds find their level of value, money is transferred from one part of the world to another by foreign exchange bills; and fortunes are won and lost in stock speculations. Wall Street is a true barometer of the country's financial condition, reflecting depression and prosperity, if only one make due allowance for speculative flurries.

The stock exchange is the center of Wall Street. It is an unincorporated, voluntary association, with a membership of 1,100. The price of membership fluctuates. Nine thousand dollars was considered a very high price in 1879; but on two occasions (December, 1905, and August, 1906) a seat on the exchange has brought $95,000, the highest price yet paid.

Five hundred firms, besides individual brokers, transact the business of the exchange, buying and selling stock for themselves and for others. All transactions are completed through the stock-exchange's clearing-house, which receives and delivers bonds and stock certificates from 10 A.M. to 2:15 P.M. By this arrangement a broker can close up his day's business just as if it had all been transacted with one man. The arbitrage trade whereby the rate for exchange drafts is determined is carried on here between New York and such cities as London, Paris, Boston and Chicago. The banks do an enormous business in loaning money on sight and for short periods. There are 500 telephones on the floor of the exchange, each in charge of a boy who receives the orders of his office and transmits them to the floor-broker for execution.

Offices on Wall Street connect by private wire with all important cities east of Denver. A private wire from New York to Chicago costs $12,000 annually, but about 25 such wires are leased by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company between Wall Street and Chicago, 50 to Boston and 30 to Philadelphia. It is estimated that 300 representative commission-houses pay expense bills that aggregate $15,000,000 per year. Each concern employs from five to sixty men. The Consolidated Exchange, called "the Little Board," is a body of speculators who deal in small jobs by slyly getting the quotations from the Stock Exchange. They deal in ten-share lots instead of one-hundred. It is safe to say, though no official record has been kept, that the volume of business on the New York Stock Exchange has far exceeded that transacted by any other institution in the world.