Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1913-07-20
WALL STREET
EEDSLESSON
FROM Ia SALE
No Western Firms Close Offices
Because They Spend for Stat
isticians, Not Champagne.
BY BoERsIANER.

CHICAGO. July IA New York
Stock Exchange membership was
transferred for $4,000 a few days ago.
At the same time New York reported
that within sixteen months IS firms
had retired from Wall Street and 1855
branch offices were closed.
These statistics are instructive, but
not necessarily ominous; just as
bourse business, though tryingly dull,
is by no means moribund.
The exchange as an institution has
been taught a much needed lesson.
That lesson has been taken to heart.
The reformatOry measures adopted,
although belated, have been numerous
and pretty thorough; they have put
the Eastern board on the ethical plane
of the European bourses.
Yet while the exchange as an ex-
change has purged itself of such poi
sonous stuff and has transformed
chronic arrogance into a courtesy
that is scarcely distinguishable from
amiable humility, certain members of
the exchange require reformation.
West Holds On.
1t is a highly suggestive contrast
that while there have been S5 re-
tirements in Wall Street, New York,
not one has occurred in LaSalle
Street, Chicago. There have been re-
trenchments in the West, but no sur
renders. Two offices we're closed re-
Gently. but these were branches of
New York houses.
The confident maintenance of their
business on the part of Western
brokers is not due to the variety of
their commission trade. Dealing in
grain, cotton and provisions as we'll as
in stocks and bonds does not account
20 h1 - -
Chicago members. Their success lies
in a qualitative, not a cumulative
attribute.
Considered collectively, Western
houses are liberal in their treatment
of clients. A ten shares customer gets
the same consideration as a 1000
shares buyer-or seller. The head of
the house does not spend $1,000 a
night in Atlantic City or on the Great
White Way winning and dining and
chorus girling a big" client, actual
or prospective. He spends several
thousand dollars year for a compe-
tent statistician and corporation ex-
pert who may keep the firms ellen
tele reasonably well informed
Champagne Not Popular.
In the West business is worked up
from an office desk during the day,
and not from a champagne bottle at
night.
In the average Western office the
partners go home after business
hours and study financial literature,
that they may be efficient and of
some real value to their following
They do not come to business at II
m. and hurry to the high-ball club
directly after the last quotation is re-
corded. To most of them the COM
mission business is a serious business
and not an aleatOry affair with a fes-
tive midnight appendage.
Again, the democracy of tone and
conduct has a meaning of practical
application. 1t is not in the hope that
the ten shares man may become a
l 900 shares man in time, which
prompts unfailing courtesy to the
humber customer. 1t is rather
prompted by a genuine feeling of
equality and fraternity.
The Westerner, unlike the East
erner, does not instantly forget a
small client at the sight of an i'm
portant one; does not become an alb
| ject sycophant. Money is the prime
consideration in the brokerage bust
ness as in other businesses, but west
| Of Wall Street it does not breed snob-
| bishness in those who possess, or ex-
| peCt to have, much of it.
AS a unit the New York Stock Elk
| change is an entirely different estab-
! lishment from what it was eighteen
months ago but the units of the East
ern exchange call for searching in
| formation.