ORGANIZED SECURITY MARKETS 33
in proportion as methods of grading and standardization obvi-
ated the necessity of inspecting all products piece by piece,
wholesale purchasing and selling by contract and by sample
became possible, and the permanent market was able to organ-
ize itself more definitely as a bourse or exchange.
Thus it came that at the close of the Middle Ages, many
of the leading bourses of Europe slowly evolved from the
great but periodic and loosely organized fairs of medieval
times. Modern stock exchange practices in many cases can
be traced back to an origin in these medieval fairs, where
future trading was to some extent employed, money lending
and money dealings of many kinds developed, and a rough
and ready justice dispensed to contentious buyers and sellers
by the “pie powder” ? (or “dusty foot” courts)—the historical
forerunners of the governing committees of our modern ex-
~hanges.
Civilization’s Debt to Market Places.—The social life and
culture of even the most ancient cities cannot be adequately
understood without considering them as market places de-
pendent on the ever-shifting routes of trade. Most of the
cities of the ancient and modern world—whether prehistoric
Cnossus or modern London—have owed their location and
much of their political power and cultural eminence to their
usefulness as market places for goods. This fundamental
relationship of market places to the wider cultural and political
aspects of the cities which have in time grown up about them,
is most obvious and apparent in the earlier stage of city devel-
opment. For it was within their market places that the early
sities of history often came to set up the statues of their gods,
organize armies, talk politics, hold assemblies, and sometimes
rule whole empires.
Although often hidden by the rhetorical flights of orators
and patriots, the celebration of military triumphs, and even
the more enduring artistic and social achievements of the
9 An Anglicized corruption of the French pied poudré.
