STOCK EXCHANGE AND AMERICAN BUSINESS 483
try. Now the average American farmer has been bombarded
too long and too steadily with misleading and distorted state-
ments concerning the Stock Exchange to have a clear idea of
just what it is or what use it serves. Offhand, he might per-
haps be inclined to suspect and condemn it on this fallacious yet
oft-repeated hearsay evidence. Yet the fact remains that the
Stock Exchange has played a continuous and highly important
part in making American farmers generally the most progres-
sive and prosperous class of agricultural workers in the world.
In recent years, much of the American farmer’s trouble
has arisen from his difficulty in marketing his surplus produc-
tion abroad, in competition with other nations whose land and
labor are cheaper than our own. It is consequently of vital
importance for the American farmer to lower his production
costs. The invention and employment of labor-saving agri-
cultural machinery, whose creation is so largely facilitated by
the Stock Exchange, is thus likely to prove of more funda-
mental assistance to our farmers, than new legislation for
extending fresh credits to him, or for vainly attempting to
establish artificially high prices for his products.
American Labor’s Stake in the Stock Exchange.—When
we pass from the country to the city the connection between the
Stock Exchange and the daily lives of the city dwellers becomes
even more direct, graphic, and thoroughgoing. The working
man’s very employment, in fact, is tied up with general condi-
tions in industry and trade which depend to so large a degree
on organized security markets. A former writer ® upon the
Exchange has clearly and trenchantly explained this connec-
tion :
The last census shows that 32%49% of the population of the United
States is composed of laboring men, not counting agricultural workers.
This large army of men is by no means independent; on the contrary
it is strictly dependent on the ability of others to give it employment.
Shut down the factories, curtail the operations of railways, close the
mines and quarries, stop building and new construction, and in greater
9 See Van Antwerp, pp. 42-43
