478 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
no genuine information. And so the mystery deepens and the
greater grows his superstitious fear and hatred of the imagi-
nary demigods and demons of Wall Street. This is human
nature—but it is not economic fact.
Services of the Stock Exchange to Investors.—In pre-
vious chapters the functions and benefits of the Stock Ex-
change as they touch society generally, have been described
with abstract and dull veracity. In the present chapter the
attempt will be made in the same unromantic but truthful
fashion to particularize and speak more specifically of the con-
tacts which the Stock Exchange has with different types of
men and of business. For even at the risk of repeating in other
words much which has been said before, it seems essential to
summarize the many powerful though often indirect links
which exist between stock exchanges on the one hand, and on
the other even those sincere but ill-informed persons who re-
gard them with undisguised horror.
First of all, a word concerning investors and investment is
called for. Previous chapters’ have sufficiently recounted the
services to investors rendered by the Stock Exchange to make
unnecessary their reenumeration here. But we should realize
that in one way or another a vast majority of Americans are
investors. The number of people who directly invest in small
lots of stock® or in small amounts of bonds* has expe-
rienced an astonishing growth of late, and has recently been
estimated at 17,000,000 in the United States.” But in addition,
additional millions of individuals today invest their savings in
listed securities by proxy, often without knowing it. Only a
relatively small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of
people who have savings accounts realize that the banks are
able to pay interest upon their accounts only through reinvest-
ing their money largely in listed securities. Both our savings
banks and our commercial banks are among the largest insti-
" 2See Chapter II, p. 41; Chapter IV, p. 93; Chapter VI, p. 166; and Chapter
Rv Leo Chapter IX, p. 252
18 Castes Re Df
