four-story building; but it was striking to him. The windows were high
and narrow; a large-faced clock faced the west entrance of the
room where you came in from the stairs; a collection of telegraph
instruments, with their accompanying desks and chairs, occupied the
northeast corner. On the floor, in the early days of the exchange, were
rows of chairs where the brokers sat while various lots of stocks were
offered to them. Later in the history of the exchange the chairs were
removed and at different points posts or floor-signs indicating where
certain stocks were traded in were introduced. Around these the men who
were interested gathered to do their trading. From a hall on the third
floor a door gave entrance to a visitor's gallery, small and poorly
furnished; and on the west wall a large blackboard carried current
quotations in stocks as telegraphed from New York and Boston. A
wicket-like fence in the center of the room surrounded the desk and
chair of the official recorder; and a very small gallery opening from
the third floor on the west gave place for the secretary of the board,
when he had any special announcement to make. There was a room off the
southwest corner, where reports and annual compendiums of chairs were
removed and at different signs indicating where certain stocks of
various kinds were kept and were available for the use of members.

Young Cowperwood would not have been admitted at all, as either a broker
or broker's agent or assistant, except that Tighe, feeling that he
needed him and believing that he would be very useful, bought him a seat
on 'change--charging the two thousand dollars it cost as a debt and then
ostensibly taking him into partnership. It was against the rules of the
exchange to sham a partnership in this way in order to put a man on the
floor, but brokers did it. These men who were known to be minor partners
and floor assistants were derisively called "eighth chasers" and
"two-dollar brokers," because they were always seeking small orders and