Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II The Committee And The Eules Of The " House " Constitution of the Committee—Rules regulating their Proceedings—The Committee's Action generally beneficial—Excessive Representation of Jobbers—A Bargain—Its Sanctity in the eyes of the Committee—Undue Laxity in the introduction of Prospectusless Issues—Increase of the " Outside " Broker—Various Reforms needed. The members of the Stock Exchange are divided officially into two classes — brokers and jobbers— who may not be partners. The brokers are in direct touch with the public, on whose behalf they carry out the various operations connected with Stock Exchange transactions. The jobbers or dealers have no relations with the public, and deal only with members of the Stock Exchange. The parts played by each of these two classes of members will be considered at length in subsequent chapters of this book. In all Stock Exchange transactions the ruling of the Stock Exchange Committee is absolute as regards the conduct of a member of the " House." The Committee may perhaps best be described as exercising a benevolent despotism over the members. Their despotic power is, however, tempered by the fact thateach and all of the Committee-men only hold office for a year, and on the 25th of March in each year the whole Committee retire; they are all eligible for reelection, and as a matter of fact the new Committee is almost invariably composed of practically the same men who have just relinquished office. It is only when the Stock Exchange is stirred to its depths over some unpopular act or ruling of the Committee in their previous year of office, that some half-dozen or so fresh candidates are persuaded by their indignant fellow-members to offer themselves for election in opposition to the re-election of some of the outgoing Com...