ORGANIZED SECURITY MARKETS 39
progressive nations of Asia like Japan, have also organized
stock exchanges of international importance.
This same trend toward a higher organization of markets
could, if space permitted, be instanced with the world’s leading
staple commodities. Metals, cotton, wool, wheat, corn,
rye, barley, pork, sugar, coffee, rice, silk, rubber—these are
only the outstanding commodities which have developed produce
exchanges. Commodity exchanges in different parts of
the world frequently stand in closer relationship than do the
corresponding stock exchanges, since the former deal in the
same single commodity purchased everywhere, while the latter
deal in different security issues of a more localized demand.
Centripetal Tendencies of Wholesale Trade.—\Vholesale
commerce has always shown an inherent and irresistible tendency
to gravitate into great trading centers or markets. Predominant
markets are therefore nothing new. When America
was as yet an unknown wilderness, predominantly active and
influential centers for commerce and finance successively developed
abroad in Venice, Florence, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam,
and London, to say nothing of the many other important but
more local European marketing centers. Still further back in
history, when America had yet to be discovered and when the
Dark Ages still brooded over Europe, there were leading markets
in the more civilized areas of the Levant and the Far
East. For many centuries it has been found that the more
purchases and sales of a particular commodity gravitate into
a single trading market, the broader it becomes and the fairer
are its prices.
As trade has freed itself from the shackles of uneconomic
and frequently mistaken legislation, and as readier means for
swift and dependable communication and transportation have
been developed, this centripetal tendency of wholesale trade
of almost all kinds has been greatly stimulated and increased.
The result has been the rise of certain exchanges to a leading
position in national and even international trade in particular
