ORGANIZED SECURITY MARKETS 35
of trade. These original markets did not in the beginning
specialize, but dealt in all kinds of goods and were located for
the most part in the open places of a town. Farmers drove
in from the country with foodstuffs to sell, weavers displayed
their textiles, and smiths their manufactured articles. In time,
money-lenders and merchants in credit also came to take part
in the market, and facilitate its operations. Markets of this
primitive type, at least in foodstuffs, still exist in some Amer-
ican and European cities, and are common in the bazaars of
the immemorial East.
But as communication became easier, population (and
hence the consumption of goods) greater, political and social
conditions more stable and tranquil, and the volume of trad-
ing larger, a process of specialization began. At first, of
~ourse, this tendency appeared within the single original mar-
ket place itself. Traders in textiles took their stand in one
part of it, traders in foodstuffs in another. Sometimes, in
the early international markets of Europe, the division was
not so much according to the commodity as the nationality of
the dealers. But with the increase in trading, certain com-
modities which experienced the heaviest trading tended to
break away from the single original market, and form separate
markets exclusively for themselves.
At first these specialized markets were often conducted in
the open streets. But with a further increase in their trans-
actions they have tended to assume the more dignified title of
“exchanges,” and finally to go under a roof with restrictions
upon the membership. In the course of the same evolutionary
process, the development of trading in contracts for the receipt
and delivery of given commodities on the floors of these
exchanges or bourses, made it unnecessary to bring into the
market place every individual object to be sold. The develop-
ment of security certificates as evidences of the ownership of
a public or a business debt, or of business equities, of course
greatly facilitated the development of organized capital mar-
