Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-01-04
WALL STREETS VAST EXTENT
EXPANSION OF FINANCIAL DIS
TRICT WITHIN TWO DECADES.
Growth of the Business of Satisfying
the Demands of Spectators
and Investors.

John Moody in the Independent.
In its larger sense the term Vail
street" means more and has much more
intimate relationship to the nation al
| large than one is apt on first thought 10
realize When Walter Bagehot wrote
! his Lombard Street" nearly forty years
/ ago he confined himself entirely TO
description OF the mechanism of the Eng
| lish money market and the title of his
book was in no sense Il misnomer. at least
not for those days. But today II one were
| 10 employ the term Wall street as the
| title of d book describing the American
| financial center one would find it neces-
sary. in order to do adequate justice to
| the subject. to cover an enormously
greater field than was anticipated by Mr..
Bagehot in his little classic on the Lon
don money market of forty years ago.
But not only has the modern Wall street
! far outgrown it's former geographical linn
| its. but it has expanded and ramitied
greatly within the past two decades in
| respect to its scope. its character and the
methods employed for carrying on its I'M
portant and ever-growing operations.
| From banking and financial center OF
ordinary type radiatins out from an
ordinary stock exchange as its chief In
| sttution, Wall street has within twenty
| years SO vastly changed that the stock
| exchange has become, in relation to many
other important functions which are per-
formed, only one of many parts of the
mechanism of the street. Since 1883
! the mechanism and general character of
| the business of Wall street have under
gone fully as radical transformations as
has the streets outward physica. appear
ance. Twenty years ago the pedestrian
| could not regard himself as being in the
| Wall street district unless he found him.
! self south of Pine street east of Broad
| way north of Beaver and west of Pearl
! streets. Within that small district of Il
| few squares he might feel the Wall street
| atmosphere. but wandering block from
| it i'm any direction he would really be as
far removed from the financial mael-
| strom'' as. lie would today in the borough
of the Bronx. And within that limited
district of the bulls and bears he would
sec little that in appearance would seem
exceptional or extraordinary. In other
| words. Wall street in those days was very
much like any other street. The buildings
were commonplace and most of them very
| old DreXel Morgan & Co.'S building.
| six stories high, with its marble exterior.
| was notable structure. and when the
| Mills building. nine stories high, was
| erected its massive proportions and great
| capacity We're the greatest of sensations.
| Exchange place and Broad street were
| nests of old-fashioned, tum1le-down rock
| cries, filled with exchange members. stock
brokers and .'two-dollar traders. To be
! to be outside of the financial district.
| This was equally true of any location on
Wall street east Of Brown Bros building.
includes Lower New York.
| But to refer to the financial district to-
day we must include all lower New York.
| The wonderful skyline Of New York city,
| with its dozens of towering skyscrapers,
grand panoramic view of which we get
;c al
sense wall street" All that section
from the Battery north to Cortlandt. John
| and Fulton streets we now find Is en-
braced within the financial district, while
| to the west of Broadway, nearly to the
rivers brink. are banking firms and in
| Sttutions. and in the direction Of the East
| river Wall street has appropriated prac-
| tically all the territory. And added to all
| this great spreading out of a generation
| is the wonderful growth up into the air
blocks and blocks of fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five and thirty story buildings,
with every few months adding more and
greater structures-all this wonderful evo-
| ution in lower New York is Wall streets
Going.
| But this is only the beginning of the
story. Today We find sections of Wall
street in other parts of the great city.
| There is a center on sd and :4th streets.
where numerous brokers have their Of
! fees: another group are to be found at
42d street and the Grand Central station:
! still others further to the north, and on
the Brooklyn side Of the river many large
! houses doing an extensive stock exchange
| business are located. Banking institu-
| tons of the various kinds. emanating, as
| it were, right from Wall street. where
their control is lodged and from whence
| they get their guidance and backing, will
| be found sprinkled throughout all the five
| boroughs up into WestcheSter county on
| the north and far out into the newer sec
tons of the greater city on Long Island.
Uptown Districts.
So much for Wall streets geographical
expansion within the great metropolis.
But the Wall street of today is not con-
fined within the limits of a single city.
| While it has been spreading all over New
York it has also been taking root and
| growing up in other parts Of the country.
| A generation ago it was not possible to
| do business satisfactorily on the New
York Stock Exchange unless one were
either in close touch with broker in New
York in one of the other large eastern
| cities But nowadays one can get stock
| quotations and have orders executed in
| a hundred cities in the United States and
| Canada just quickly and satisfactorily
| as can the man who is standing at a
! ticker next door to the stock exchange.
| The development of the branch Office
and wire house" business since the early
| nineties has revolutionized the methods of
| stock trading. There are many houses
| in Wall street today which maintain doz-
| ems of branch offices in different parts of
| the country. all connected by private wire,
and there are many others which MAIN
| tain private wires to other brokers and
to ordinary correspondents. In fact, i'm
most any city of 10000 inhabitants or
over from the Atlantic to the Pacific will
nowadays be found up-to-date facilities
for giving orders for immediate execu-
| ton on the New York Stock Exchange
But, as pointed out at the beginning of
this article, the business Of the stock eX-
change is only one of the many sides of
the modern Wall street, While sales of
a million shares mean only normal day
for the stock exchange. and the sales Of
bonds run into the millions daily, yet the
buying and selling done outside the walls
of the stock exchange are frequently of
far greater extent and often have greater
significance. for the vast development of
the corporate enterprises of the country
with the greatly increased demand fer
investments of all kinds, has brought
prominently into the field two new di-
visions of the great Wall street mechan-
ism, both of which have spread out to an
almost boundless extent during the past
ten or fifteen years. These are the in
vestment bankers and the curb brokers'
one filling a purely investment field be-
yOnd or outside of the scope of the or
binary functions of the stock exchange
and the other occupying special and