498 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
dominant social, political, and economic figure of his age. The
daily life of the common man in the Middle Ages can best be
left to the imagination.
Standards of Modern Consumer.—And now for our haber-
dasher’s clerk. He dresses in a variety of plain but substantial
clothing, and for breakfast, if he is especially hungry, has the
choice of imported fruits (be it January or June), coffee from
Java or Brazil, eggs from ten to a thousand miles away, fresh
milk, white bread, and cereals from wheat grown in Canada
or the Dakotas, with pepper from the East Indies and sugar
from Cuba included as a matter of course. He rides to work
in a trolley, subway, or steam railroad car, a distance of sev-
eral miles, or perhaps he makes the trip by auto bus. He
lunches modestly, perhaps, but according to his fancy. And
when the day’s work is done he puffs contemplatively on a
cigar assembled from Sumatra, Virginia, and Maryland, and
summoning his friends by telephone, enjoys the most or least
classic music on his phonograph or radio, or sallies forth to
attend the motion pictures. He lives a longer, more pleasant,
and more intelligent life, despite his modest income and sub-
ordinate economic position, than the average medieval baron
could picture in his wildest dreams.
The writer by no means wishes to imply that all this vast
and tremendous economjc transformation which the world has
experienced in the past few centuries has been due simply to
the creation of stock exchanges. Thousands of inventors, gen-
uine statesmen and political reformers, scientists, pioneers, and
adventurers have been necessary to obtain the degree of civiliza-
tion which the average American enjoys today. Nevertheless,
in every detail of the clerk’s life described above the Stock
Exchange as a source of corporate working capital has given
a vast and ofteh unrecognized cooperation in producing and
making available for everyone’s consumption those articles
which in our own luxurious times have come to be considered
as necessities.
