The Savannah morning news., 1902-03-02
By. F. A. Collins.
Copyright 1902. by F. A. Collins.)

ACOPyll5l lJUEs ny It ~ (OlAAAAosJ
Precisely at ten every business morn
ing a liveried attendant, armed with a
huge gong, steps upon the floor of the
New York Stock Exchange and beats
a resounding tattoo. The first strident
note is a veritable call to arms. Be
fore it's echo has died away hundreds
of traders with their scouts, aids and
messengers. are struggling in a great
seething mass. The same signal has
meanwhile been carried to thousands
of ofTices-the money world is awake.
Continuously for the next five hours
the kings, hirelings, servants and
slaves of finance wage fierce battle.Just
$4,000 seconds, any one of
which may spell ruin, and the volume
of business requires that each tick
of the clock shall be a record of some
thing done. Nowhere else in the world
has the mechanism for carrying on
business been reduced to such an eX-
act science.
Wall street is always feverishly i'm
patient to hear the latest news about
itself. The general public may be
content to wait for it's morning paper.
The Wall street man demands the
latest financial news of the entire
world at intervals of seconds only.
The financial news service under the
pressure has reached a perfection little
short of marvellous. The news is tele-
graphed over a variety of tickers di-
rectly from the floor of the Exchange
to the thousands of offices, it is talked
over telephone wires with continuous
fiVe-hOur connections, or it is printed
i'll miniature newspapers ana distrib-
uted by hand at the rate of fifty or
more editions every five-hour financial
day.
Visitors to Wall street will scarcely
fail to notice the swarms of small
boys clutching handfuls of papers and
usually on the dead run. They tumble
Unexpectedly out of Easements, disap-
pear in an instant through the door
ways of great office buildings, to return
shortly empty handed. These are the
most alert newsboys in the world.
They distribute by main boy power
the famous financial news to the offices
of the market operators. In normal
times they deliver an edition every
ten minutes. During financial panics
or other excitement, editions are even
more frequent.
The ten-edition- an hour newspaper
is organized much the same as an or
binary news sheet, but with more de-
pendence upon the telegraph, tele-
phones and various bOr-Saving de-
vices. The financial news is collected
and condensed in the briefest possible
form, and is rushed to the type-setting
machines. In an incredibly short time
the form has been thrown into a buzz
ing little press and the edition is be-
ing run off. Under ordinary conditions
brief news items can be written, edited,
put in type and a proof obtained with
in from three to four minutes.
The form and size of the newspaper
or bulletin is sacrificed to speed. The
sheets measure about five by nine
inches. The volume of news furnished
in this form in a day is considerable.
They give the news more in detail than
the tickers and are more reliable. They
are meant to be read at a glance in the
rush of trading hours. They give briefly
studies in the value of securities, re-
ports on railroad and industrial proper
ties and comment on the money and
exchange markets.
The newsboys, usually about fifty
strong. line up before the little presses
as the time for the edition APP
proaches. The bulletins flutter from
the press at the rate of eight hundred
a minute. The boys grab them by the
handful and disappear through the
nearest door on the run. The time OF
their exit and return is taken to the
exact second. Wages are advanced ac-
cording to these records. A matter of
twenty seconds or so in covering a
hA c11ffipinVt ~ dist n pr11S n
a god boy from a slow one. More than
four hundred offices in the district are
served in this way at least every ten
minutes.
A well organized strike on the part
of these neWsboys, We're it to come UNI
eXpectedly, would be felt more or less
sriously on all the great financial eX-
changes of the world. A delay of sec
onds in distributing important news
bearing upon the market often causes
serious fluctuations in prices. At
such times the other means of diStrib
uting the news are usually clogged
and are far behind the actual financial
times. SO for a few brief minutes the
financial world of Wall street may be
said to hang upon the alert boys. Incl
dentally they stand an excellent
chance of promotion. 1t is possible
that some of the great financiers of the
future are at present standing in line
before the little buzzer presses.
The little tickars with their inceSsant
chatter and more or less ineligible
hierOglyphics are, of course, familiar.
These report the quotations of stocks
in thousands of offices in something
less than a minute after their an
nouncement. During financial panics
the market at times becomes so active
that the tickers find themselves an
hour or more behind the news. The
stock ticker has been elaborated of
late in several ways. A complicated
mechanism which prints the news by
electricity on continuous page of
scroll is the most successful of these
devices. All these contrivances are
operated from d common center, either
On the floor of the exchange or some
point in direct communication with it.
A single operator seated before a type
writer writes upon a thousand sheets
in every section of the city al the
So me instant of time.
The number of Stock Exchange tick
ers is restricted and many ingenious
devices are resorted to repeat the Of
fetal figures with the least possible loss
of time. To be sure, the figures may be
repeated over other tickers, and there
are several such services for sale But
this however nimbly done, entails the
loss of two or three minutes at best.
BY the time the beiated figures ar
rive an active stock is likely to have
fluctuated a dangerous distance The
best substitute for an official ticker is
to repeat the figures by word of mouth
over a telephone, the circuit being kept
open throughout the entire financial
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