84 ~~ THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
stocks, there is also a class of dealers and brokers who spe- 
cialize in bonds. These must likewise be allotted a chapter by 
themselves.?® 
Parts of the Stock Exchange System.—The various 
brokers and dealers above enumerated compose the actual mem- 
hers of the market on the floor of the Exchange, where con- 
tracts are made for the purchase and sale of securities and for 
the borrowing and lending of both stocks and money. The 
floor of the Exchange is the oldest, most central, and most 
indispensable part of the Stock Exchange system. 
But in addition to the floor, there is (2) the clearance and 
settlement system,®” embodied in the Stock Clearing Corpora- 
tion, which provides an efficient and economical method of 
clearing and settling contracts made on the floor; (3) the com- 
mission houses? including their branch and correspondents’ 
offices in all parts of the country and even abroad, through 
which the public has access to the security market on the floor; 
and (4) the administrative machinery of the Exchange,* in- 
cluding not only many specialized officers and employees of 
the Exchange, but also several subsidiary corporations like 
the New York Stock Exchange Quotation Company, the New 
York Stock Exchange Building Company, etc. These several 
parts of the Exchange system will be successively treated in 
subsequent chapters. 
Evolution and Change.—It is well for the student of the 
New York Stock Exchange to realize at the outset that, while 
today it represents the culmination of over a century’s evolu- 
tion, it is a living and growing economic organism in which 
development and change are constant. Not only must this 
market accommodate the business of a vast and always grow- 
ing country, but its specific methods must steadily adapt them- 
selves to new conditions in banking, corporate organization 
# See Chapter X. 
27 See Chapters XII, XIII, and XIV. 
#8 See Chapter XV, 
2 See Chapter XVI.