CHAPTER III 
THE RISE OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 
Earliest New York Markets.—New York was founded by 
the Dutch in 1623, not as an asylum for religious or political 
freedom, but as a trading post. Owing to its splendid natural 
port facilities, the city had, early in the eighteenth century, 
become a commercial center of no small importance. Its mer- 
chants from the first possessed both energy and vision. As 
early as 1752, in fact, they had established a general meeting 
place for merchants, or “Exchange” as they called it, at the 
foot of Broad Street, for dealings in meal and water-borne 
produce. An even more significant market place was estab- 
lished on the wharves at the foot of Wall Street (now near 
the intersection of Pearl Street), where the manufactured 
goods of Europe were unloaded from incoming boats from 
abroad, and auctioned off to local merchants. In 1768 the 
present Chamber of Commerce was organized in the long room 
of Fraunces’ Tavern, which still remains in the financial dis- 
trict as a reminder of pre-Revolutionary Manhattan. 
Prior to and during the Revolutionary War, there was no 
security market in New York, for the excellent reason that 
practically no securities existed in colonial America. Such 
capital as then existed flowed into land or goods. Only occa- 
sionally did American cities issue bonds; company shares were 
also thoroughly exceptional, since most business was conducted 
by individuals or partnerships rather than by stock corpora- 
tions. In any case, however, the financial facilities of imperial 
London, capital of the British Empire, were available to British 
colonies, and until American independence was won. there was 
cr