ADMINISTRATION OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 463
borrowings on security collateral in New York. The effects of
this collection and publication of “Stock Exchange loans” have
been already reviewed.3*
Past Criticism of the Stock Exchange—Question of Incorporation.—The
Stock Exchange has by no means escaped
criticism and even governmental investigation in the past, both
with respect to the nature of the services which it daily renders,
and to the manner in which its business is conducted and administered.
On the whole, the Exchange is today undoubtedly
the gainer by this searching criticism; it has adopted in toto
several practical and constructive suggestions made to it, and
has successfully adapted others to improve its methods in a
practical way. But unfortunately, during the course of the
Hughes Committee investigation of 1909, the so-called Congressional
“Money Trust” investigation of 1913, and the hearings
on the proposed Bill S. 3895 before the Banking and Currency
Committee of the United States Senate in 1914, many
inaccurate criticisms of the Exchange were uttered and given
widespread publicity. Fanciful remedies for fancied grievances
also were not merely proposed, but urged with insistence. Some
of these have already been dealt with in the preceding pages.
It remains necessary here to examine the proposal to force the
Stock Exchange to incorporate.
The mystical benefits of incorporation have been vehemently
urged with a rhythmical recurrence which is analogous to
the tidal swings of the stock market, and which has perhaps
been occasioned by them. For every bear market results in
financial losses and indignation on the part of speculators, who,
being unable to retaliate upon the intangible laws of economics,
vent their feelings upon the tangible Stock Exchange. Someone,
as by a stroke of inspiration, cries “Incorporate the Stock
Exchange,” and again it becomes necessary to point out the
fallacy of this alleged method of inaugurating Utopia. :
The Stock Exchange is regulated by law to the extent of
34 See Chapter XI, pn. 279.
