10 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
commodities. If the price of capital is today mainly estab- 
lished on the New York Stock Exchange in Wall Street, so too 
the price of cotton is made chiefly on the New York Cotton 
Exchange in William Street, and the price of cereals chiefly 
on the Chicago Board of Trade. This higher centralization 
of wholesale trade, whether conducted on exchanges or not, 
is a normal and desirable economic evolution, and in the long 
run legislation should not attempt artificially to halt it. More 
and more, therefore, in this day of steam railways, telephones, 
telegraphs, radios, cables, stock tickers and airplane mails, 
there is a steadily increasing trend toward the centralization 
of markets, and the subordination of all but the great central 
market places to more purely local operations. This trend does 
not, however, necessitate the decline of local markets, but 
merely develops in them local and special functions which they 
are best able to perform. 
In the United States, the tendency toward centralization 
of markets is clearly shown by the Federal tax statistics * on 
security and commodity sales, according to which about nine- 
tenths of stock sales in this country occur in New York City 
(either on the New York Stock Exchange—the largest Amer- 
ican organized security market, or on the New York Curb 
Market—the second largest American stock exchange, or in 
the unorganized New York “over-the-counter” market), while 
a large proportion of exchange transactions in produce occur 
either in Chicago on its Board of Trade or in New York on 
its several commodity exchanges. 
Economic Functions of Organized Securities Markets.— 
The benefits of the higher organization of securities markets 
into stock exchanges have been recognized throughout the 
civilized world for at least the past century, not only by prac- 
‘ically all economists who have adequately studied the subject, 
and by every competent governmental investigation ever made 
concerning them, but also by millions of individuals in their 
Tac Appendix IIb.