246 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
nental Exchanges have acted at such junctures to 
establish an artificial floor of prices at the minimum 
of the market, as of certain dates. Informally, also, 
the jobbers who are invariably the intermediaries 
between brokers on the London exchange have been 
known at times to ‘‘desert’” the market, thus auto- 
matically shutting off trading, when they judged that 
the prices of securities were declining to panic levels 
and no longer represented a true estimate of values. 
But, unlike the market specialists of the New York 
Stock Exchange, the London jobbers are an essential 
factor in the transfer of stocks on the London Ex- 
change; they are forbidden to take any commission 
in stock transactions, and would hardly be suspected 
of ulterior motives of valorizing or sustaining prices, 
if they quitted the market and virtually closed the 
exchange when they deemed the level of prices to 
have run dangerously low. 
In the case of the New York Stock Exchange, 
some action by the governors themselves would be 
requisite to place this automatic check upon panic 
prices in such an emergency as developed during 
October and November, 1929. In addition to the 
1914 precedent, there is precedent for this measure 
in the rules of the New York Stock Exchange 
whereby securities listed on the Exchange are stricken 
from the list or trading therein is suspended by the 
governing committee in cases wherein the committee 
deems there is no fair market in such securities. In 
specific cases the governing committee has provided 
that contracts shall not be closed under the provisions