62 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
no need of creating rival facilities in the new colonial towns of 
New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. 
These conditions, however, disappeared with British rule. 
The Revolution had created a heavy American national debt. 
The first Congress assembled in Federal Hall (where the his- 
toric New York sub-treasury building now stands, diagonally 
across Wall Street from the present New York Stock Exchange 
building), and authorized the issue of $80,000,000 in bonds, 
or “stock” as it was then called, to consolidate and refund the 
war debt. ‘Thus there came into existence a new form of 
property, in an amount enormous for those days, for which no 
regular market existed. 
Meanwhile, the financial necessities of the new Republic 
were leading to the creation of a new financial machinery. In 
1781 the Bank of North America was incorporated in Phila- 
delphia. Not to be outdone even by what was then the com- 
mercial and financial center of the country, the merchants of 
Manhattan organized the Bank of New York in 1784. But a 
still more significant step was yet to be taken. In 1791 Alex- 
ander Hamilton, a New Yorker and the first Secretary of the 
U. S. Treasury, prevailed upon Congress to establish the first 
United States Bank. 
Origin of the New York Securities Market.—The scrip 
stock of this new institution, when it was offered to the public, 
inaugurated the first wave of security speculation in this coun- 
try, in which the 6% United States Government stock as well 
as the shares of the new United States Bank and the Bank of 
North America were favorites. The frequent purchases and 
sales of these early American securities created the need of 
some regular market where they could be more readily and 
efficiently conducted, for investors were naturally averse to 
exchanging their savings for securities which could not be 
easily sold again. 
The earliest records of security marketing in New York 
are meager and obscure. Apparently, securities were first sold