15
The Stock Exchange and Corporate Development.—In
the distribution of corporate securities among American investors
 during the past century the New York Stock Exchange
 has played and is today playing a necessary part.
Exactly how the constant market for securities maintained by
the Exchange operates today to assist corporations in obtaining
funds and the public to obtain the best investments at the fairest
prices, will be related in subsequent chapters. It is sufficient
at present to point out that the Stock Exchange has been a
vital factor in helping our railroad corporations to secure the
funds which made it possible for them to span our great continent
 with their myriad tunnels and bridges and their thousands
 of miles of steel-shod roadways.
Still more recently our gigantic industrial enterprises
have been enabled through the assistance of the Stock Exchange
 to build those vast mills and factories which the whole
world trend of modern production has necessitated. Without
the creation of these huge companies and the safeguarding of
their stockholders through the daily operations of the New
York Stock Exchange, the marvelously swift development of
American transportation and industry would have been quite
impossible.

THE EVOLUTION OF SECURITIES

Growth of the “Trusts.”—Ever since our Civil War,
powerful economic factors have caused our corporations to
become larger and larger. A similar tendency has more
recently been seen in Great Britain and Germany, particularly
since the Armistice. The advent of these so-called “trusts”
has occasioned a considerable readjustment in business methods,
and at times they have been attacked as a menace to democratic
government. Yet experience has shown us that the mere bigness
 of a corporation does not as such constitute any offense
to the public, nor any inherent danger to its welfare. The truth
of the matter is that resistless economic forces have necessitated
5 See Chanters IT and IV.