Market access

“ We enjoyed the confidence of the large importers and dealers and were in close touch with the consuming trade throughout the country. Our facilities for getting information as to stocks in the aggregate and individually were unequalled. The large consumers posted us in advance of what their requirements would be for certain periods. If the large city dealers were manipulating the market it was done through our office and we knew their plans. ”

“ Those who lived near a town were permitted to sell their products in the market place within the walls on condition that they sold directly to the consumers. They might not dispose of their whole stock to one dealer, for fear that if he had all there was of a commodity he might raise the price above a just one. ”

“ If seventy men are constituted sole managers of a market for 130,000,000,000 francs of transferable securities, one of two things is sure to happen; either a public market will establish itself outside these seventy men, or the seventy will prevent the establishment of the public market. ”

“ Unlike listed securities, there is no central trading place for securities traded over the counter. The market is established by traders in the numerous firms all over the country through a process of constant communication to one another of the latest offers to buy and sell. The private wire connection, which allows communication to occur with a flip of a switch, is an essential part of this process. ”

“ We recognize a short-loan market, a stock exchange, a number of "markets" where lenders and borrowers are brought together by the aid of various intermediaries, such as banks, bill brokers, and stock jobbers, who correspond to dealers in commodities. ”

“ The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by sometimes even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. ”

“ The same is true of established market places, boards of trade and produce exchanges. Not only does the multitude of exchanges in one place lessen the cost of such exchanges, but these make it possible for multitudes to reach a fair understanding of what is wanted and what is offered in any line of production. This need accounts for the tendency so frequently noticed to establish great centers of trade in particular commodities. The world wants a fair understanding of what the world contains, and these methods of bringing together buyers and sellers are the natural outgrowth of this need. ”

“ The securities are new, the company may wish to advertise them, attract attention to them, and solicit a public interest in the laudable enterprise that lies behind them, all of which is as right and proper as it is for any merchant to establish a market for any new article on his shelves. To accomplish his purpose the merchant must first fix an arbitrary price; if the public will not buy at that price he must “manipulate” a lower price, and in all his subsequent dealings there must be manipulation of one form or another designed to conform to the supply and demand in that particular article. ”

“ Protection secured the home market to the home manufacturer, compelling the consumer to pay more, and sell for less, by excluding the foreign manufacturer from the market, or imposing such burdens, by way of duties, as to compel him to sell at higher prices than would be a just profit on his labor and skill under the operation of free trade, and which should exempt from his competition the home manufacturer in the American market. ”

“ When one talks of a Stock Exchange market, he has in his mind a mere space in the Stock Exchange near some pillar or window; or, much more likely, he has in his mind the group of men who occupy it, dealing, or prepared to deal, in certain securities. Generally speaking, custom alone forms the barrier between the various departments, and the consequence is that when one particular market attracts many members by reason of its animation, the dealers in the busy part frequently overflow the fancy boundaries and press hard upon the neighbouring space. ”

“ Hence we see that just as every farmer in the West and every cotton-grower in the South must have a stable market for his products, so every laborer in our great industrial field is directly concerned with the maintenance of a stable market for the securities of the company that employs him. The interests of one are the interests of all, and speculation, in one form or another, underlies all industrial progress. ”

“ At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. ”

“ Buyers seek the largest market they can get in order to obtain the lowest prices; sellers, in order to obtain the highest prices; and so it was learned long ago that economy of time and labor, as well as a theoretically perfect market, could be best secured by an organization under one roof of as many dealers in a commodity as could be found.2 Bear in mind that this result, moreover, is best accomplished when the organization is so controlled by rigid rules of business morality as to insure to every one who does business there, great and small, rich and poor, an absolutely square deal. ”

“ The constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can; which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new [Pg 309] adventurers from entering into the trade. ”

“ If from investigation it appears that there is a market for one’s goods in any section or universally, that quality and prices can be such as to make competition favorable, that the market can be enlarged, or should there be none that one can be created, and a determination is therefore formed to enter export trade, the next question is how the goods shall be sold. ”

“ The outside market on the curb could not exist if it were not for the stringency of the requirements in the interest of the public which the Stock Exchange imposes in respect of the admission of securities to trading within its walls and jurisdiction. ”

“ Must he be compelled to send them at a venture, without knowing whether there is any demand for them? This may, undoubtedly, be safely done with regard to some products for which there is always a market and a demand, or where the course of trade has established a general and unlimited demand. ”

“ While the Stock Exchange is in theory a private institution, it fulfills in fact a public function of great national importance.
That function is to afford a free and fair, broad and genuine market for securities and particularly for the tokens of the industrial wealth and enterprise of the country, i.e., stocks and bonds of corporations. ”

“ Second, we may call attention to those exchange dealers whose principal business is to buy commercial and bankers' bills, and to resell them, chiefly to banks. Third are the independent brokers who make small commissions by bringing buyers and sellers together. These do not invest their own capital, do not, that is, buy bills of exchange in the market, but assist those desiring to sell bills to find buyers, and vice versa.... ”

“ At the present moment, you are secured in a monopoly for forty-two years, among a population of twenty-six millions of people, certain, at the close of twenty years more, to be fifty millions and likely, at the close of another half century, to be a hundred millions, and with facilities, for the disposal of your products, growing at a rate unequaled in the world. With this vast increase of market, and increase of power over that market, the consumer should be supplied more cheaply than in former times ”

“ In this practice is found the origin of the market, a medieval institution of which more will be said later. A market was a place appointed by the government, where bargains could properly be made; and only small exchanges of household produce could be made outside it, in the open country. Beginning in the need that was felt to prevent thieving it developed as a public institution, which the people found it profitable to extend as a means of collecting tolls and of regulating internal trade.
35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of commerce ”

“ Every day we hear of combinations, Farmers’ Alliances, rural co-operative movements, etc., each designed to regulate the market for eggs, butter, potatoes, and such things, and each having for its purpose the very functions which govern a Stock Exchange in its own field—namely, the establishment of a fair price under the nearest possible approach to ideal conditions. ”

“ Although a new invention or a wide expansion of market may alter so considerably the expenses of production of the several quantities of supply as to materially affect monopoly-supply and prices, it is the latter influence, that of flexibility of demand, that directly in each specific case determines whether a Trust's prices shall be high or low. ”

“ For generations, our Nation's free enterprise system has provided consumers an unparalleled selection of high quality goods and services, as well as ample opportunities for earning, spending, and investing personal income. Now, as more and more countries around the world adopt market-oriented economies, thereby expanding global trade and commerce, consumers stand to benefit from an ever wider array of options. ”

“ Out of this necessity there have grown up a number of special organizations which exist for the special purpose of facilitating these readjustments. The market which brought the modern city into existence is one of these devices. More interesting, however, are the exchanges, particularly the stock exchange, and the board of trade, where prices are constantly being made in response to changes or rather the reports of changes in economic conditions all over the world. ”

“ The market is maintained by stand rentals and administrative charges and by a fund established for the improvement and extension of the system. On the entire enterprise, when all charges have been met and interest paid, there is a profit of over $135,000 a year. ”

“ Those outlets, though statistically unimportant from the point of view of the national market, could be a matter of life and death to small, local enterprises.
The largest market which must be taken for comparison is the market actually reached by the company which is being absorbed. ”

“ To protect ourselves from loss in our sales for London account we had to take from time to time an interest in the market and this made us dealers. To complete our sales we were compelled to import the material and thus became importers.
With the opening of the year 1889 we found ourselves possessed of fairly large capital and a firmly established credit with bankers. These facts, combined with the best facilities for doing the business, decided us to eliminate the brokerage phase entirely, except in our transactions with our speculative clients. ”

“ Honest transactions in a free market between buyers and sellers are at the core of individual, community, and national economic growth.
In the final analysis, an effective and efficient system of commerce depends on an informed and educated public. ”

“ He fares best if the sale is concentrated in one market, and ‘change’ prices simplify the struggle between buyer and seller. The search for customers, foreign as well as home, and the bearing of all possible risks of disposal, are in any case difficult enough to necessitate the whole strength of a man. The wholesale merchant alone is in a position to pay the manufacturer in cash or on sure, short terms. But especially where export is in question is the dispersal of sales an extreme impediment. ”

“ Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. ”

“ It is also argued that to determine whether it is better to manufacture or to buy goods in the open market, and whether it is better policy to manufacture by means of expensive machinery and other equipment or by manual labor, interest on investment must be considered. ”

“ The convenience of this method being found great, it was improved as commerce increased, till a market was established where merchants might meet and make their exchanges without loss of time, instead of having to run after one another in search of what each wanted. The next thing was to institute a class of persons whose express business should be to manage these transactions. ”

“ Its agents conducting the sale could not counteract the effect of such a combination as can the agents of a private corporation, who may look after their interest in all the markets of the world in their own time and in their own way, according to the exigencies of the season and the demand, and who are supplied with money which they can use, without public scandal, in the manipulation of the market. ”

“ The quantity of goods in store being at all times readily known, it would enable the importer with an approach to accuracy to ascertain the actual wants of the market and to regulate himself accordingly. ”