RISE OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 71 
original companies by Dutch investors. Many examples might 
likewise be cited of American utility and industrial securities 
which similarly found their way into the coffers of Euro- 
pean investors. In 1886 the opening of the transatlantic cables 
at once broadened the market for listed American securities, 
by permitting the speedy transmission of quotations and orders 
between Europe and this country. Ready arbitrage was thereby 
facilitated, and foreign capital was attracted into American 
securities on a vast scale. Thus the almost incredible swiftness 
with which this country was built up involved a debt of our 
corporations to European security-holders of several billions 
of dollars—a debt whose interest and dividends amounted to 
several hundred millions of dollars annually. 
Speculative Beginnings of the Industrials.—Both be- 
cause the New York Stock Exchange was at that time mainly 
a railroad market and also because even the best of our new 
industrial companies were in the beginning intensely risky and 
speculative enterprises, the Exchange first created an Unlisted 
Department in 1885, where the new industrial shares which 
could not altogether meet the increasingly strict requirements 
of the Committee on Stock List could nevertheless be admitted 
for trading purposes. Many of the soundest industrial invest- 
ment securities of today began here as highly speculative and, 
to the older Exchange members, rather dubious propositions. 
One of the most striking changes, in fact, which the last 
quarter-century has witnessed in the stock market is the grow- 
ing repute of industrial securities and the waning glory of 
the rails. 
A later chapter® will describe how and why the growing 
market first organized its clearing house on May 17, 1892— 
the centenary of the signing of the original brokers’ agreement. 
In 1903 an important step in architectural expansion was taken 
by the erection of a new Stock Exchange building. While this 
"9 Chapter XIL