the peasants and small tradesmen.
State, provincial, and communal aid for these institutions has been
more frequently evoked and more extensively employed outside than
inside of Germany, and other important modifications of the German
prototypes have been made in Italy and elsewhere.

_5. Stock Exchanges_

An essential part of the machinery of investment banking is the stock
exchange. This is a place where the buyers and sellers of securities
or their agents regularly meet for the transaction of business. It may
be a portion of a street or a market place or a room in a building. A
fully equipped modern exchange contains a large room equipped with
telegraphic and telephonic communication with the most important parts
of the country in which it is located and of the world, with apparatus
for registering prices and easily communicating information to its
members, and with the offices needed for the accommodation of the
clerks and other employees required. Either by posts or in some other
manner the precise places in it in which each security or group of
securities is to be dealt in is also usually indicated.

The purpose of the stock exchange is to facilitate and to regulate
dealings in securities. It facilitates such dealings by providing as
nearly perfect means as is possible for putting buyers and sellers
into communication with each other, and for collecting and making
available to them the information they need. To this end they provide
for daily meetings at fixed hours; they make and publish lists of the
securities dealt in; they speedily record and, through the telegraph
and the telephone, communicate to all quarters of the globe the prices
at which securities change hands; and through the meeting room
equipped as before described they make it possible for buyers and
sellers, no matter where located, to communicate with each other in a
very short period to time. They regulate such dealings by establishing
and rigidly enforcing rules and regulations for listing, transferring,
clearing, and paying for securities and for other matters pertaining
to the conduct of their members.

These institutions serve investment banks as well as private
investors, constituting the machinery which connects them all. They
thus enlarge the area and scope of the markets for securities, and
greatly increase the mobility of capital. Without them the surplus
savings of one locality would only very slowly and with difficulty
find the