The suburban citizen., 1902-05-31
WALL STREET WONDERS
BITS OF THE COMPLEX MACHINERY
OF FINANCE.

'""S DeNAces TO hepeatQuotatlonh
Precisely at 10 every business morn.
ing a liveried attendant carrying a
gong, steps upon the floor of the New
York Stock Exchange and beats n re.
sounding tattoo. The first note Is a
call to arms.
Before its echo has died way hun.
dreds of traders with their scouts, aids
and messengers are struggling in a
great seething mass. The same signal
has meanwhile been carried to thou.
sands Of ofices-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 bust
ness requires that each tick of the
clock shall be record of something
done. Nowhere else in the world has
the mechanism for carrying on bust
ness been reduced to such an exact
| science.
Wall Street is always feverishly i'm
patient to hear the latest news about
itself. The general public may be con.
tent TO wait for its 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 this
pressure has reached a perfection lit
tie short Of marvellous. The news is
telegraphed over q variety Of tickers
! directly from the floor of the Exchange
to thousands Of offices, 1t is talked
over telephone wires with continuous
five-hour connections, or it is printed
in miniature newspapers and 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 a dead run. They tumble
unexpectedly out Of easements, dlsap-
pear in an instant through the door
ways Of great office buildings, to re.
turn shortly empty handed. These are
the most alert newsboys in the world.
They distribute by main boy power the
famous financial news slips to the Of.
fees Of the market operators.
In normal times they deliver an edi.
tion every ten minutes During fnan.
c!al panics or other excitement edi.
tions are even more frequent.
The ten-edition-an-hour newspaper is
organized much the same as an ordi-
nary news sheet, but with more de.
pendence upon the telegraph, tele.
phones and various labor-saving de.
vices. The financial news is collected
and condensed in the briefest possible
form, and is rushed to the type-set-
ting machines.
In short time the form has been
thrown into buzzing little press and
the edition is being run off. Under OF.
dinary conditions brief news items can
be written, edited, put in type and a
proof obtained in from three to four
minutes.
The form and size of the newspaper
or bulletin are sacrificed to speed.
The sheets measure about five by nine
inches. The volume of news furnished
in this form in day is considerable.
The sheets give the news more in de.
tail than the tickers. They are meant
to be read at a glance in the rush of
trading hours, They give briefly
studies in the values OF securities, re-
ports on railroad and industrial prop.
critics 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 an.
proaches. The bulletins dutter from
the press at the rate Of 500 a minute.
The boys grab them by the handful
and disappear through the nearest
door on the run.
Ihe time OF their exist ana return
Is taken to a second Wages are ad.
vanced according to these records.
a matter Of twenty seconds or so in
covering a route may be sufficient to
distinguish a good boy from a slow
one. More than 400 offices in the dis
trict are served in this way at least
every ten minutes.
A well organized strike on the part
Of these newsboys were it to come un-
eXpectedly, would be felt more or less
seriously on all the great financial
exchanges Of the world. A delay of
seconds in distributing important
news bearing upon the market often
causes serious fluctuations in prices. |
at such times the other means of
distributing the news are usually
clogged and are far behind the actual
financial Tines. So for few brief
minutes the financial world Of Wall
Street may be said to hang upon the
alert boys.
incidentally they stand an excellent
chance of promotion. 1t is possible !
that some Of the great fnanciers OF the
future are at present standing in line
before the little buzzer presses.
The little tickers with their incessant
chatter and more or less ineligible |
Sieroglyphics are, of course, familiar. |
These report the quotations Of stocks
IN thousands Of offices in something |
NAH