413 
The Romance of Gauging the Future.—There are few 
more fascinating aspects of the modern business world than 
that revealed to the thoughtful spectator of the stock board. 
As one sits in the customer’s chair, he is, through the news 
ticker, placed automatically in touch with the latest news of 
the world—news which the linotype batteries of the great 
metropolitan papers have not yet even started to cast into 
columns and pages. But the stock board itself goes even this 
instantaneous news service one better, for the ever-restless and 
ever-changing security prices which it records are the estimates 
in dollars and cents of future rather than present conditions in 
the whole country’s industry and trade. The hopes, the fears, 
the aspirations, and dreams and dreads of the whole nation 
thus find an expression here in the ceaseless fluctuations of 
stock prices. 
The sheer romance of this constant attempt to discount the 
future which causes much of the price fluctuation in speculative 
stocks makes a particularly strong appeal to the imaginative 
mind, for the thoughtful student of modern society and civili- 
zation can see in it the true significance of the stock market as 
a barometer of the future. Many hard-headed American busi- 
ness men who never engage in marginal transactions in securi- 
ties, nevertheless follow the course of stock market prices very 
closely in order to foresee the probable future tendencies of 
their own particular business. 
But the commission broker, being of necessity an eminently 
practical man, can scarcely be expected to maintain expensive 
offices, engage numerous highly trained technical employees, 
buy a Stock Exchange seat, obtain extensive credit facilities at 
the banks, and undergo constant business risks, merely for the 
philosophic pleasure of furnishing amusement to day-dreaming 
students of industry and trade. Although brokers sometimes 
speculate in securities themselves, their business consists pri- 
marily in earning commissions on their customers’ orders. Let 
us see exactly how this is done. 
THE COMMISSION HOUSE