ded the prestige and power of the stock exchange to
those of the banks, and fixed for an indefinitely long period the
destinies of the financial centre of the Union.

During the earlier part of this century the banking interests of Wall
Street quite overshadowed those of the stock market. The growth of
railway securities was not fairly under way until the opening of the
fifth decade. Elderly men can recall the date when the New York
Central existed only as a series of connecting links between Buffalo
and Albany, under half-a-dozen different names of incorporation; and
passenger cars were slowly and laboriously hoisted by chain power over
the "divide" between the latter city and Schenectady. Since there were
but few railways in the entire country, there were few opportunities
for speculative dealings in their shares. These shares, too, were as a
rule locally held, and were more frequently transferred by executors
under court orders than by brokers on the stock exchange.

Prior to 1840 and 1845, however, the members of the stock exchange
were not idle. Public stocks were largely dealt in. The United States
government frequently issued bonds, and the prices of these bonds
fluctuated sufficiently to afford tempting chances of profits. State
bonds also were sold in Wall Street in larger amounts than to-day.
About the year 1850 the sales of Missouri sixes and Ohio sixes
frequently amounted to millions of dollars daily. During that
uncertain epoch of finance when the United States Bank was both a
financial and a political power, the shares of that institution were a
favorite subject of speculative dealing. The shares of Delaware &
Hudson, and of the original Erie Railway, the latter laboriously
constructed over a rough, barren, and thinly settled portion of the
State, partly by State funds, had also become actively exchangeable in
the market.

During this period a relatively enormous quantity of banking capital
had located itself in and near Wall Street. The Bank of New York
existed before 1800, and later, although not long after, the Street
witnessed the erection of buildings of a now obsolete, and yet at that
time an attractive, style of architecture, devoted to the uses of the
Manhattan Banking Company, the Bank of America, the Merchants, the
Union, the Bank of Commerce, and others. Were it not that land in the
banking district is so valuable, and that the need of upstair offices
is so great, one might be tempted to regr