The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-09

Nearly every time man more than twenty-one years old goes to Europe for a little rest the newspapers print front page stories announcing that he has re- tired from business and Is going to spend the rest of his life enjoying the fruits of his toii. Now, it is Thomas F. Ryan who has quit the game. Mir. Ryan has accumulated enough money to enable him to live comfortably for the rest of his life, and 1t may be true that he is not going to work twenty-four hours a day any longer. MT: Ryan went over to Washington last winter and learned some things. He learned, for one thing, that MT. Roosevelt was going to put the screws on Mir Hartman. Mir Ryan came back to New York and proceeded to sell some of his gilt edge securities at high prices. About the first thing that he did was ,o sell 90.000 shares of Union Pacific. MT. Ryan. they say, wasn't very much surprised two months later when Union Pacific sold down to $120.
 The campaign that is being successfully waged against bucket shops in various parts of the country will probably bene- fit legitimate exchanges. Very stringent anti-bucket shop laws have been passed in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Mis- souri and other states, and the managers of the big wire systems" are searching around for the means to carry on their business, at the same time keep out of jail.
 While members of the New York stock exchange hate to admit It., 1t Is probably true that the aggregate business done hy the bucket shops of the country is con siderably in excess of that conducted on the stock exchange. When the stock ex- change is struggling along on half milion shares a day business, and brolt- ohar bat ria ont ting down expenses generally, it. Is safe to say that the bucket shops of the country are doing nearer a million shares a day. The bucket shops run their wires all over the country and fur nish specuatprs facilities for trading on small margins in small amounts of stock. Traders in interior towns. who are ashamed to go Into stock exchange house to buy or sell ten or twenty shares of stock satisfy their speculative appe- ,ite by giving their business to bucket shop. If the closing up of the bucket shops throughout the country would re- suit In transferring business of the buck ct shopr to the legitimate exchanges the real markets for stocks and commodities will be greatly broadened The value of a legitimate market in securities Is that 1t is a sensitive barometer of values, en- ables public companies to raise capital easily. and also enables investors to buy or sell securities at moments notice. The more trading there Is done In the stock markets the more easily do they perform. their functions. The transfer ring of large part of the bucket shop business of the country to the stock ex- changes would make them more useful to the community.
 Even bankers who are bulls on the fu- ture Of Southern Railway acknowledge that the payment of the per cent divi- dend on the preferred stock has been a mistake. Says one banker: 'The north does not appreciate the tremendous pos abilities possessed by the Southern rail- way. The road is literally swamped with business, which it has been unable to handle quickly or economically be- cause 1t has but a single track. The management realizes that the future of the road largely lies in it's being double tracked. With this end in view the work of puptting in a second track on its main line between Washington and Att lanta has been rushed ahead and already between 175 and 200 miles out of the TOO have been completed and much grading finished on the remaining distance. Given a double-tracked road with ade- uuate rolling stock and there is no reason why the road should not show handsome returns. It has natural earning capac-