RISE OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 65 
of this period, long before the security market became continu- 
ous, is furnished by article 2 of the contemporary constitution :* 
2. It shall be the duty of the President to call the stocks at the hour 
that may be fixed upon by the Board, from time to time, as the season 
mav require. . . . 
From the scanty records which survive from these early 
days, it does not appear that the Exchange had any even com- 
paratively permanent home until 1827, when it rented a room 
in the Merchants’ Exchange Building at Wall and Hanover 
Streets. From this shelter the stock market was, however, 
rudely evicted by the great fire of 1835. But after several 
further wanderings, including the temporary occupation of a 
hay-loft, the Board at length reoccupied in 1842 a large hall in 
the new Merchants’ Exchange Building on the present site of 
the National City Bank. (Plate 4.) Here it remained until 
1854. 
Beginnings of Railroad Development.—Meanwhile, no 
sooner had our government established itself politically and 
financially, than the great task of opening up and settling the 
vast western areas of the country began. The keynote of this 
westward colonizing movement was, of course, transportation. 
At first carriage roads and then canals were constructed from 
the Atlantic seaboard over the mountains into the fertile hinter- 
land of the Mississippi Valley. In 1825 the completion of the 
Erie Canal opened up a water route from New York into the 
Great West and definitely transferred the commercial center of 
the United States from Philadelphia to Manhattan. Neverthe- 
less, it was not until the advent of the steam railroad that any- 
thing like transportation in the modern sense of the term 
became possible. The year 1829 saw the first train moved by 
an American steam locomotive in this country, an experiment 
fraught with the utmost consequence to the United States. 
Serious initial difficulty was experienced in raising the large 
sums of money needed to establish railroad systems. A solu- 
3 Ibid. p. 64.