The work of the Stock Exchange

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVII. The stock exchange and American business

Collection:: Economics Books

STOCK EXCHANGE AND AMERICAN BUSINESS 497 Life in the Middle Ages.—The Baron bathed rarely and without soap. Even as late as the days of “good Queen Bess” it was deemed advisable when presenting a masque to the noble ladies and gentlemen at court, to have a perfumer walk up and down through the audience, lest the odor of the un- washed flower of England's lords and ladies overcome the pleasant fancies of the dramatist. Glass windows were un- known in the castles of the Middle Ages, and the dark castle halls were hung with flapping arras behind which the assassin often lurked. Carpets were luxuries and had to be imported from the East; among the rotting rushes which covered the floors, dogs growled over half-consumed bits of food cast tc them from their master’s table. Owing largely to the prevail ing ideas of a “fair price” and the punishment prescribed for charging interest or speculating, starvation among the common people was common and hunger among the nobility not unknown. There were no sewers, no drains, no medicines except the superstitious concoctions of the age, no surgical instruments except the axe and the dagger. A constant menace from plague and disease shadowed lord and vassal without partiality. Pigs were depended upon to clear the narrow city streets of refuse, and also to feed the inhabitants. When the baron traveled, he went on horseback and in armor which, if like Banquo he rode unattended at night, did not always save him from being murdered. His wealth consisted mainly of real estate, his income of rents paid in kind—a pig here, a bushel of wheat there—and his daily work of fighting his ten- ants to collect the one and his enemies in protecting the other. His only entertainment, apart from these not altogether pleas- urable diversions, was furnished by wandering jugglers, the songs of the occasional minstrel, or the reiterated jests of a court fool. Such an existence, romantically as it has been described by Sir Walter Scott, scarcely appeals in a practical way to the modern American. And vet the baron was the

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