440 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
near the stock market as the nearest branch office or corre-
spondent of any Stock Exchange house. Recently, the radio
has even enabled branch offices of Stock Exchange firms to be
established on some of the larger ocean liners for the conveni-
ence of their passengers. In consequence, the New York
securities market is readily accessible to practically all American
business men at all times.
Overcoming Time and Space.— Until the last century, it
had been one of the perennial problems of government to con-
trol large areas of land. Lack of facilities for communication
and transportation had in the end frustrated even the ambitions
of the Caesars and Napoleons of history. That this difficulty
was realized by the founders of this nation is attested by a
writer®* upon the modern wire house:
George Washington advised against including the Mississippi River
in the Union. Webster opposed taking in Texas and Oregon. Monroe
once warned Congress that a country which reached from the Atlantic
0 the Middle West was “too extensive to be governed except by a
despotic monarchy.” But they spoke in the days when mountains still
retained mastery over man, when distances were measured in miles
rather than in minutes.
Due to the efforts of scientific inventors and business organ-
izers (and, incidentally, by the investors and speculators in the
stock market who financed them), this former supposed limi-
tation upon the physical size attainable by free governments
has been dissipated. An almost equally notable triumph has
occurred in the economic realm of business through the growth
of free markets, and by the same means. The telegraph has
made possible the rise of world markets, accompanied by
greater stability in industry and trade. Without facilities
for instant communication, the present international market
places would crumble and again resolve themselves into local
markets, with scanty and precarious trading, and a parochial
pn BT. 3, Boje Tie Back-Suge Side of the Wire Business,” Commerce and
