A second consequence of the inability of the Stock Exchange to provide an investment market is the continuous dwindling of business and income of the Stock Exchange firm:
The large firms of commission brokers with their nation wide net of branch offices are geared exclusively to a speculative market. Their machinery is devised to serve the man who, while living in Los Angeles, wants to play the minute-to-minute fluctuations of the New York Stock Exchange. The branch offices have to be connected with the New York headquarters by pri-vote telegraph and teletype wires over which every change in prices can be sent without any loss of time. In New York itself an enormous staff has to be maintained to ensure immediate execution and immediate cable confirmation of every order without possibility of mistake or delay.
"The expenses of such an organization are unbelievably high. One large firm in the "Street" is said to have minimum expenses of more than $350,000 per month. Expenses of $150,000 per month are not un-Common for a well-sized house. Such Overheads can only be met in some houses if the private clients turn Over their funds. once every six "Weeks on average.
With the growth of an investment business and of.an "investment market outside the Stock Exchange the maintenance of a volume in the Speculative market sufficient to provide enough commission income has become impossible. The Stock Ex Change and its members are therefore faced by the dual problem of attracting the investment market and of adjusting the machinery of the average commission house so as to enable it to cater for the investment market and to live on the proceeds of a very much lower and slower turnover.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.