114 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After 
Emeritus of Yale University, and even earlier by 
Charles Francis Adams, Js. 
Sovereign Remedy of Publicity 
Publicity is the sovereign remedy against merger 
evils today. 
Incidentally it might be pointed out that the real 
leader in this movement for greater corporate pub- 
licity has been the New York Stock Exchange. No 
other major stock exchange in the world has adopted 
such strict listing requirements in this and other re- 
spects, or has so ruthlessly disregarded its members’ 
earning power for the sake of prospective benefits to 
the investor from this source. The Exchange is, of 
course, unable to control the situation with the same 
inclusiveness that a national law could. The difficulty 
lies in the fact that incorporations are actually made 
by the individual States, and it is difficult, if not im- 
possible, to secure uniform standards among them. 
The value of fuller corporate publicity has in a 
measure been shown in the recent stock market by 
the greater stability of railroad than other listed 
issues. American railroads must report earnings 
frequently under standard methods of bookkeeping 
prescribed by the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
The investor knows with a railroad security just 
about what he is buying. This is by no means the 
case with industrial securities, and the investor is 
largely forced to speculate on the accuracy of pub- 
lished industrial corporation statements. This ap-