All these measures touch only the outer fringe of the problem, for which no really satisfactory solution has as yet been devised. Till then the steady reduction of the number of Stock Exchange.firms by merger and liquidation can be expected to continue. At the present moment some twenty-five Stock Exchange firms—some of them internationally known—are contemplating the sale of their business to competitors. An additional dozen houses are engaged upon the reduction of the number of branch offices. It is significant that contrary to all previous experience this process did not lose speed during the satisfactory Stock Exchange business in July, and that it is now actually gathering momentum as daily transactions have again fallen below the one-million shares mark, Yet, the final solution of the problem—how the New York Stock Exchange can become an investment market—eannot be found this way. On the contrary, many of the best observers fear that the reduction in the number of independent brokerage firms will make it even more difficult to provide the free investment market which this country needs so badly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.