APPENDIX 
605 
ment-controlled Stock Exchange might almost be described as a 
characteristic Anglo-Saxon institution, and that the task of incessant 
care and vigilance in the management of elusive economic forces is too 
huge and too subtle for statutory mandate to encompass. He quotes 
‘he Stock Exchange Commission of 1877 as follows: “Any attempt 
to reduce these (Stock Exchange) rules to the limits of the ordinary 
law of the land, or to abolish all checks and safeguards not 15 be found 
in that law, would, in our opinion, be detrimental to the honest and 
efficient conduct of business . . . the existing body of rules and 
regulations have been formed with much care, and are the result of 
long experience and the vigilant attention of a body of persons inti- 
mately acquainted with the needs and exigencies of the community 
for whom they have legislated.” 
He goes on to state (p. 612-13), “Corporate regulation, such as 
the Stock Exchange species, is dependent largely for its application 
upon the esprit de corps of a professional body. It is much more 
psychological in operation and sanction than the clumsier mandates 
and prohibitions of a public statute, backed merely by physical force. 
A Government might propose a system of ethics for the Stock Ex- 
change, and enact it as a statute, but it could not procure its acceptance 
and observation. Psychological influence and the mysterious energy 
which we call esprit de corps can penetrate where statutory and 
mechanical pressure would be easily excluded. That is why the great- 
ast religions have depended on the psychological sanction. Economic 
reform must depend largely on the employment of the same subtle and 
pervasive force.” 
CHAPTER XVII 
The Stock Exchange and American Business 
(XVIIa) “Stimulated by the urge for funds to finance the vast 
oroduction program of the United States during the World War, the 
aumber of shareholders in the country’s business enterprises has, it 
is estimated, grown from about two million to more than seventeen 
million; and out of increasing incomes these investors have continued 
0 pour their savings into the stream of credit.”—Report of the Com- 
mittee on Recent Economic Changes, of the President’s Conference 
on Unemployment (Herbert Hoover, Chairman), 1929, p. xii. 
(XVIIb) In his address “The Stock Exchange and American 
Aoriculture.” delivered in Omaha, October 17, 1928. Mr. E. H. H.