May i, 1903 ] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



253 



dollars in the increased efficiency of such industries as the 

 leather, textile, or India-rubber manufactures. 



The chemistry of India-rubber forms one of the most 

 complicated fields of applied science. One might count 

 on his fingers all the men in the world who have made 

 extensive scientific research in this field and much remains 

 to be known about the chemical properties and possibili- 

 ties of Caoutchouc. Of course, a large number of facts 

 related to these problems are known to every competent 

 rubber factory superintendent, but scores of problems re- 

 main unsolved. If the government would establish a 

 rubber laboratory with a competent head, its value to the 

 trade, and so indirectly to all the people of the United 

 States, might be very great. The rubber interest is surely 

 large enough to be in a position to ask for such help 

 from the government, and conditions are such that trade 

 does not satisfactorily do the work for itself. This course 

 would gradually substitute science for empiricism and cer- 

 tainty for guess work, and no rubber man has been so 

 uniformally successful that he should not welcome such a 

 change. 



There is now being organized a new department of the 

 government of the United States — that of Commerce and 

 Labor, in charge of a secretary ranking as a member of 

 the Cabinet— partly in recognition of a growing feeling 

 among manufacturers that their interests were being 

 slighted at Washington as compared with the attention 

 given to the promotion of agriculture. While the first 

 work of the new department shall be to consolidate and 

 improve certain branches of statistical work carried on 

 hitherto in various other departments, including the na- 

 tional census, a study of the act creating the new branch 

 of the government shows its head to be empowered " to 

 foster, promote, and develop the various manufacturing 

 industries," by gathering and making available "useful in- 

 formation," and "by such other methods and means as 

 v may be prescribed by the secretary or prescribed by law." 

 It would thus seem to be within the province of the new 

 department, in its "bureau of manufactures," ultimately to 

 create experimental stations which should extend to manu- 

 facturing interests such helps as the government now af- 

 fords to agriculture. Under the generally broad author- 

 ization of the law, the secretary of commerce and labor 

 can do very much what he chooses to do — provided appro- 

 priations are forthcoming. It is encouraging to hear that 

 the new cabinet minister is desirous of making of his office 

 something more than a mere statistical office, and doubt- 

 less practical suggestions from manufacturers bearing upon 

 their needs would be welcomed by him. 



THE STOCK EXCHANGE AND BUSINESS. 



pHE opening the other day of the new home of the 

 A New York Stock Exchange, now the largest and 

 most costly and sumptous bourse in the world, is a matter 

 of interest not alone to the brokers who do business there 

 and their clients. Those persons who conceive of the 

 stock exchange only as a place for speculative buying or 

 selling, or where prices of shares are " manipulated " by 



" insiders " at the expense of the unwary investor, see only 

 an incidental side to an institution which exists only in an- 

 swer to a wide and legitimate demand for a register of 

 corporation values. The history of modern industrial de- 

 velopment is the history of enterprise by means of joint 

 stock companies, and the great readiness with which capi- 

 tal has been invested in such undertakings has been due 

 to the growing facility with which such investments can be 

 realized on. 



With so much of the real wealth of the country held by 

 corporations, large and small, the occasion is constant for 

 buying and selling shares, just as the sale of real estate 

 and other property individually owned is constant. And 

 in order that every man who wants to buy or sell shares of 

 a railway or manufacturing company may not be obliged 

 to shop among his friends or even strangers for a chance 

 to trade, ami in order that something like established 

 prices may prevail, and, above all, honest dealing, a recog- 

 nized snare market has become a necessity. 



But the importance of the stock exchange extends fur- 

 ther. The many owners of shares who do not want to sell 

 are no less interested in knowing their real value than the 

 much smaller number of owners who are sellers or buyers. 

 Hence the daily reports of stock prices advertise to thou- 

 sands and millions of people what each is worth in the way 

 of corporation property, and, consciously or otherwise, own- 

 ers of shares are thus influenced in their business plans, in 

 the buying and selling of goods, in building for the future. 

 The whole market cannot be influenced at once by manip- 

 ulation, and a general decline in share values teaches con- 

 servatism in the matter of new undertakings, just as a rise 

 suggests general prosperity and encourages increased 

 efforts to expand businesses and industries. As the pro- 

 portion of the country's wealth held by corporations in- 

 creases, the importance of rightly reading stock quotations 

 as a business barometer becomes greater, while interest in 

 the effect of a " raid " on this or that stock becomes less. 



The tendency of any stock exchange is gradually to re- 

 quire a higher standard, so to speak, of character for 

 the securities admitted to trading privileges, and to give 

 greater publicity to the facts regarding the condition of 

 the companies represented by such securities. These 

 tendencies, together with that of constantly getting nearer 

 the real values of the securities, point to a time when 

 trading in stocks will no more suggest speculation or 

 " gambling " than trading in commercial commodities. 

 Already the shares of many railways have been removed 

 from the speculative list, and the reorganization of some 

 more overcapitalized " industrials " will result in their 

 securities being regarded in a different light than at 

 present. The growth of the N'ew York Stock Exchange, 

 therefore, is worth considering as a factor in the com- 

 mercial and industrial development of the country and the 

 world, no matter if the opportunity does still exist in Wall 

 street for the parting of the fool and his money. That was 

 easy enough before stock exchanges were ever thought of. 



The forty million dollar bicycle trust has surprised 

 no one by coming to grief. The financial world, by the way, 



