WALL STREET STAMPEDE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 19 May 1928, Page 11

WALL STREET STAMPEDE

JN the Alaskan gold rush .days, when-, ever whispers went about of a new ■‘s'Lrik?.” a. great inob of iiatige-i s-on would rush from Dawson Oifcy and wa.v points U> stake.cut calms in adjoining, territory. Tn-clav Wall Street., which has been proving* a new bonanza land to innumerable speculators, has made the acquaintance of a new army of stamped-, els. It had an informal introduction to this horde -in 192 d, when a daily .sale of 2,000.000 shares on the Stock Exchange was considered phenomenal. But the* more iec-ent 4,000, 000-shares-a-day turnovers have jarred the entire financial world, have kept leading bankers burning the midnight electricity, and have completely upset the normal of the u-V.ook Exchange itself. The first casualty is that dramatic old friend, the stock “ticker,” _ This clatter Liter .symbol of “the srtreat, ” over whose tape so many suicides of the movies and dramas have been staged, has been practical'v washed away in .the flood of business. There frequently are times now when the ticker is 30 minutes behind the actual trading on the floor of the Exchange in New York, a condition licit only disastrous to the necessary meticulous routine.. but cor- I tain to bring further chaos to an al- i ready chaotic situation. At present-, in a dozen laboratories, inventive young men are working night and day to turn out some super-mechanism that can keep paor with trading such as marked the past few weeks. The Exchange keeps a record of every purchase and sale. Messengers M«emWe reports' of individual deals. Thev go to the ticker operator, via an intricate system of blackboards and other equipment. But when this involved machinery becomes clogged in a

CRAZE FOR SPECULATION

lands.ide of trading and when, for half an hour, die world cannot learn what is going, on. confusion is the inevitable result. t imer such pressure as it has facod. the carefully organised routine of the Exchange hae become almost as archaic as the primitive first trading mark under the historic buttonwood tree, where 6S Wall Street now towers. Those were the. days when Wall Street got its name, for it was literally a walled street, the wall being provided to keep out the Indians. The barricade stood fnisfc against many an attack. So did the modern Wall Street —for a while. There was a wall of mystery about this centre of national finance, and the man on the street viewed it. with an awed and uncomprehending expression. It seemed impregnable to the man from Kalamazoo. Ashtabula, Cedar Rapid's and Cooks Fa.’K Once that mysterv was dispelled. Main Street he-, gan to' crash through. The man on the Main Street knows to-day that he has merely to give his order to his agent and it null be wired to some Manhattan brokerage firm. He can plav the market over the old drum stove quite as handily as .lie can at Broadway and Wall Streets. He can — and does. Another factor that lias figured largely in this most recent flurry is the woman ‘speculator* Those hundreds of little branch offices about New York, where tire tickers silently. flash their information, have lieen jammed with women gamblers. Time was when women were not wanted in the brokerage offices. They were looked upon as “hard) lowers, ’ ’ and given to hysteria, and .bad sportsmanship. This has changed since women plunged actively into the . business world and began to learn how to play the man’s game: