arthed by law courts or legislative committees. It
seems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread of
the tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minute
books, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may look
it over.

This is not an easy task. To differentiate the interesting and the
essential from the mass of routine material is, perhaps, not very
difficult, but to present this segregated matter in a form that will
not be monotonous is much more of a problem. The proceedings of a
Committee that has been in continuous session must, when written down,
partake of the nature of a diary, and to that extent be tiresome
reading. We shall, therefore, have to ask the indulgence of any one
who happens to look into these pages, and beg him to pass over the
form for the sake of the substance. That the substance itself is of
deep interest goes without saying. It was given to the Stock Exchange
to play a great part in a momentous world crisis, and it must be of
profound interest to know how that part was played.

Stock Exchanges are a relatively recent product of modern
civilization, and like new comers in every field they are suspected
and misunderstood. The most complex of all problems are economic
problems, and the functions of Stock Exchanges form a most intricate
part of political economy. It has, consequently, been a noticeable
phenomenon in all contemporary industrial society that the activities
of the stock markets have been a constant subject of agitation and
legislative meddling. Most of this meddling has been based upon
ignorance and misunderstanding, but in a broad view this ignorance and
misunderstanding are excusable owing to the novelty and above all the
great complexity of the factors at work. One of the needs of the time,
therefore, is that the public, and their representatives in the
Legislatures, should be enlightened as fast as possible with regard to
the immensely important uses of these institutions, and to the
operation of their very delicate machinery.

The World crisis of 1914 forced upon us an object lesson on the
question of speculative exchanges in general which ought to be of
lasting profit. For years agitators had been hard at work all over the
country urging the suppression of the Cotton Exchanges, and claiming
that they contained gamblers who depressed the price of the cotton
growers' product. In the summer of 1914 the dreams of these agitators
were r