er one must be a citizen of the United States of 21
years of age or more. The number of members is limited. Persons
obtain membership by election, or by the transfer of the membership of
a member who has resigned or died. A new member who is admitted by
transfer pays an initiation fee of 2,000 gold dollars, in addition to a
large fee to the transferrer, for his "seat in the House". A member
may transfer his seat to his son, if the Committee of the Exchange
approve, without charging for it; but in all cases the transferree pays
the above-mentioned initiation fee of 2,000 gold dollars.

The prices for these seats vary, the fluctuations being due to the
upward or downward trend of the stock market. Within recent years the
price has risen considerably, and as much as 95,000 gold dollars has
been paid to the transferrer. This is much higher than the price
usually paid by new members in Stock Exchanges in Europe, yet when a
seat becomes vacant there is no lack of purchasers. It is clear that a
seat in the "House" is very valuable to the holder. In the building
each member has a stall allotted to him where he has a telephone for
his exclusive use; this enables him to communicate every transaction
done in the Exchange to his business house, and to keep up connections
with his constituents in other cities. When one of his constituents,
say in Washington, D.C., desires to buy a certain security the order is
conveyed to him direct, and executed without delay. I have seen a
transaction of this kind executed in ten minutes, though there was a
distance of several hundred miles between client and broker. The
amount of business transacted in the "House" every day is enormous,
aggregating many millions of dollars. New York also has other
Exchanges, where different articles of merchandise are purchased and
sold, such as corn, coffee, cotton, etc., and the volume of business
transacted daily in that "Empire City" must be immense, and almost
beyond calculation.

Of course there are Exchanges in Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, St.
Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and other cities, all
conducted on similar lines, but the prices are always governed by the
quotations from New York. This skilful and systematic way of doing
business is remarkable, and I am inclined to believe that New York is
ahead of many cities in South America and in Europe. No wonder that
the services of Americans are required by other countries in indu