CHAPTER VII

THE STOCK TICKER


"THE letters and figures used in the language of the tape," said a
well-known Boston stock speculator, "are very few, but they spell ruin
in ninety-nine million ways." It is not to be inferred, however, that
the modern stock ticker has anything to do with the making or losing
of fortunes. There were regular daily stock-market reports in London
newspapers in 1825, and New York soon followed the example. As far back
as 1692, Houghton issued in London a weekly review of financial and
commercial transactions, upon which Macaulay based the lively narrative
of stock speculation in the seventeenth century, given in his famous
history. That which the ubiquitous stock ticker has done is to give
instantaneity to the news of what the stock market is doing, so that at
every minute, thousands of miles apart, brokers, investors, and gamblers
may learn the exact conditions. The existence of such facilities is to
be admired rather than deplored. News is vital to Wall Street, and there
is no living man on whom the doings in Wall Street are without effect.
The financial history of the United States and of the world, as shown
by the prices of government bonds and general securities, has been told
daily for forty years on these narrow strips of paper tape, of which
thousands of miles are run yearly through the "tickers" of New York
alone. It is true that the record of the chattering little machine, made
in cabalistic abbreviations on the tape, can drive a man suddenly to the
very verge of insanity with joy or despair; but if there be blame for
that, it attaches to the American spirit of speculation and not to