RISE OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 67
promoters flourished, and stock speculation overflowed the
Stock Exchange into three additional and newly organized
minor exchanges: an open-air exchange, the forerunner of the
present Curb Market and in some ways like the original market
of 1792 under the buttonwood tree; another unique body,
which hired the room which adjoined the Stock Exchange and
based its transactions on such quotations as it could overhear
from the “Big Board”; and lastly, the “Coal Hole Exchange,”
which derived its name from its subterranean quarters at 23
William Street, where a securities market possessing little
formality or decorum but a large turnover was for a time
conducted.
This whole post-war period was from an economic stand-
point an unhealthy one, with inflated currency a fundamental
cause of distraction and unsettlement. This evil was for the
most part corrected when specie payments were resumed in
January, 1879. In the interim, however, the overstrained con-
ditions of credit precipitated a panic in 1873 which proved so
severe that for ten days the Stock Exchange was compelled to
close its doors for the first time in its history. Yet it is sig-
nificant of the growth of Stock Exchange transactions at this
period that the present “continuous market” in securities dates
from shortly after the Civil War. Prior to that time, stocks
and bonds were “called” at intervals during the day, and such
trading as resulted in them were supposed to occur, and usually
did occur, only after the “call” in each instance.
Railroad Securities on the Exchange.—The period of
1850-80, for all its economic alarms and excursions, also wit-
nessed a tremendous increase of railroad construction in this
country, which was alternately stimulated and depressed by the
tides of economic circumstance. Even before the first railroad
train crossed the continent in 1869 and doomed to extinction
the Conestoga wagons, prairie schooners, and overland stages,
a deluge of railroad bonds and stocks had already swept into
the Stock Exchange. To the Stock Exchange the organizers
