ealized. The Cotton Exchanges were all closed and the cotton
grower was given an opportunity of testing the benefits of a situation
where there was no reliable agency to appraise the value of cotton.
The result may be summed up in the statement that the reopening of the
Cotton Exchanges met with no opposition. A similar object lesson was
furnished in the case of the Stock Exchanges. They were all closed,
and for a few weeks some profound thinkers in the radical press stated
that the country was showing its ability to dispense with them. When
the time for their reopening came, however, there was no agitation to
prevent it. On the contrary it was hailed as a sign of the resumption
of normal financial conditions in the United States.

This evidence that the experience of 1914 has cast a much needed light
on the public value of speculative exchanges, gives a further excuse
for describing in some detail how the experience was passed through by
that greatest of all these institutions, the New York Stock
Exchange.

THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE IN THE CRISIS OF 1914

The New York Stock Exchange

CHAPTER I

THE CLOSING OF THE EXCHANGE

The Stock Exchange is in the second century of its existence and in
that long period of time (long relatively to the number of years
during which Stock Exchanges have been known to the world) it has been
forced to close its doors only twice. The first occasion was the great
panic of 1873, the after effect of civil war when trading was
suspended for ten days; the second came with the outbreak of the world
War in the close of July, 1914. These two remarkable events differ
profoundly in the gravity of the circumstances which brought them
about. In 1873, although the financial disturbance was one of the
greatest the United States has ever experienced, the trouble was
mainly local and did not seriously involve the entire world. The
Exchange was not closed in anticipation of a catastrophe but was
obliged to shut down after the crash had taken place, in order to
enable Wall Street to gather up its shattered fragments. The measure
of this crisis was the ten days during which trading was suspended.

Far different from these were the circumstances surrounding July 31st,
1914. On that eventful date a financial earthquake of a violence
absolutely without precedent shook every great center of the
civilized world, closing their markets one by one until New York, the
last of all, fina