enormous amount which has to be put down before a man can become a member of the inner clique of the Paris Bourse. In the last case, a capital of anything between 75,000l. and 95,000l. is necessary; and this, of course, makes it very difficult for anyone to become a member unless he is possessed of a fortune himself, or, as is commonly the case, is one of a group of wealthy men who elect him as their representative to deal in this way. Failures in the London Stock Exchange are sometimes declared to be far too frequent; and in a bad year this is no doubt the case. Amongst the legislation to come must be included some provision for increasing the stability of the individual Stock Exchange member; and that steps have already been taken in this direction is proved by the compulsion put upon new members for the purchase of shares-which shares, by the way, can only stand in the names of members of the House, save in exceptional circumstances.

Members of the Stock Exchange are divided into two distinct classes-jobbers and brokers-between whom there are sharp distinctions in the matter of the business which they undertake. The broker, as everybody knows, deals with members of the public, acting as agent between them and the jobbers with whom he trades in the Stock Exchange. The jobbers are not allowed to deal with the public at all, but must confine their activities to transactions with the brokers and their fellow jobbers. Until lately the demarcations were but vaguely defined; and even now, although much stricter rules have been passed, there is a steady undercurrent of resentment between the two classes owing to acts which each regards as encroachments by the other upon its domain. As to which of the two divisions it is better to belong to, there are differences of opinion; but many men with experience of both classes hold that to gain a few years' experience with a broker and then to go into business as a jobber is the best course for a young man who contemplates a Stock Exchange career.

Life on the Stock Exchange is not at all unpleasant, although the aspirant will have to banish from his mind the fancy descriptions which he has read-of hours ranging from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an hour off for lunch and half-an-hour for tea. There are men,

certainly, who go to lunch at twelve o'clock, and regularly every day spend at least three hours in playing dominoes in one of the Stock Exchange restaurants; while some members have been known to spend as much as six hours at a sitting over the ivories. But such habits may spell ruin. Some fifty years ago, one of the best-known men in the House, with a splendid connexion, fell into the habit of playing chess after lunch. The craze grew upon him to such an extent that his business gradually dropped off; and at last he had to retire from the House, 'hammered' and bankrupt. The profession, however, does involves long hours of idleness; and, in the circumstances, it is somewhat remarkable that there should be so little excess in the matter of alcoholism.

The average broker, arriving at his office between 10 and 10.15 a.m., runs through his correspondence and takes note of the various orders contained in his letters. The jobber, not dealing with the public, bas very little correspondence to trouble him, and often goes straight to the House, without visiting his office at all. He must be in the market ready to deal with the brokers as they come in armed with their orders, for the early bird catches the worm in the Stock Exchange as well as in other fields. By half-past ten the Stock Exchange is filling. There are some 5000 members of the House and 3000 clerks having the entrée to the Stock Exchange. The clerks who are authorised to transact business wear no distinguishing mark, but unauthorised clerks carry a blue button as a badge; while others who are admitted only to the settling rooms underneath the House wear red buttons. The button, it may be remarked, must be worn in the lapel of the coat, according to the official rule. When it was first enacted that clerks should wear buttons, there was a terrible 'outery; and those who had to submit to the odious tyranny, as it was called, revenged themselves by wearing their buttons in all sorts of inconspicuous places. The stream of unauthorised and settling-room clerks goes downstairs into the basement in order to check the bargains which have been done on the previous day, while the members proceed to the floor of the House in order to deal and to discuss the outlook. Most members have a particular stand in the Stock Exchange, at which they are called by the waiters

stationed there for that purpose; and to this stand come telegrams and messages as well as calls from outside. Nearly all the stands have electric indicators connected with them-great square frames of glass with long lines of numbers which are illuminated from behind by electric bulbs. If a man is wanted, a waiter in the stand, in addition to calling his name, presses a switch which turns on the electric light behind the member's number on the indicator; and, if the shout fails to bring him, he is certain to notice the number being up and to return to find out what is required.

News comes into the House all day long from one channel or another. There are two boards for the posting of information of a public character. In addition, members or syndicates of members can subscribe to a special service of information which is delivered in advance of that conveyed to the public press. News, of a sort, is also supplied by rumour-mongers and manufacturers of gossip. It cannot be said that the House is ever without points of interest, because, if there are none to be recorded officially, others are put into circulation by an easy effort of the imagination. As the broker walks through the House, he passes the various markets. Vague limits divide one from another, but there is no definite boundary; and at times of excitement one department will bulge out into another-to the disgust of the one which is being displaced. However, these things always correct themselves in time; and each market has its turn in due course, according as the wheels of fortune bring one into prominence and throw another into the background.

The morning passes, as a rule, easily enough. There is business going on which gives employment for perhaps two or three hours; and the luncheon hour comes none too slowly. Afterwards, however, the House may become very quiet indeed; and, except for a little excitement about ten minutes past three, when the New York Stock Exchange sends across its opening prices, the latter part of the day is likely enough to be uninteresting. Members get tired of doing nothing; and, in slack times a novice in the profession is apt to experience a feeling of utter exhaustion in the evening, from which he would suffer far less in a period of activity. Events of the day get thoroughly ventilated in the Stock Exchange, because of

the amount of time that men have on their hands in which to debate them. It is recorded of one member that he earned the nickname of the Channel Tunnel' because he was the greatest bore on earth.

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As the jobber has nothing, officially, to do with people outside the Stock Exchange, he is able to shut his book at 4 p.m., when his market closes, and go home, unless he has work to do in his office of a clerical nature. The office itself may be of very modest proportions; and a man with even a large business can keep all his books and transact all his business from the Stock Exchange itself, entering his accounts in the reading or writing rooms, and settling everything on the floor of the House. If he prefers to have an office, he will generally be able to find other members willing to share it with him, as also the services of a clerk and an office-boy. Of late years, the fashion has been in the direction of rather more extravagance; but ten years ago it was no uncommon thing to enter an office in which four different jobbers occupied as many corners of the room and shared the services of a single clerk-and-office-boy, who spent most of his time smoking cigarettes and arguing questions of high topical interest with another over the way or across the passage. Having closed his book, and perhaps done half-an-hour's work at his office, the jobber can go home, unless it happens that his market is the South African or the American, when probably he will stay in the street after hours on the chance of picking up business. The American market continues, as a rule, to deal up to 8 p.m. (5 p.m. on Saturdays), when the cable offices on this side close down. Up to that time, wires are coming in continually from New York with orders and prices; and a man would be ill-advised to undertake jobbing in the American market unless he has a splendid constitution and lives within easy reach of town. Every year the Yankee market levies a death-tax upon its members through the medium of pneumonia and other complaints brought on by long exposure in the street after official hours; and very little is done to provide these late dealers with adequate accommodation or shelter.

While the jobber is loitering in the street or going home, the broker must proceed to his office in order to deal with the correspondence that will finish up his day's

work. He may find fresh orders waiting for him which have to be attended to in one or other of the street markets, or over the telephones when the orders concern stocks and shares for which there is no market on the kerb. Not every jobber, even if he does not deal in Americans, or South or West Africans, goes home at four o'clock. A growing number now stay in town until a later hour, because the business of dealing over the wires after four o'clock is on the increase; and, so long as there are turns to be made, the member or his clerk will stop to look after them. No small part of a broker's correspondence has to wait till after 4 p.m. to be dealt with, for enquiries have to be answered, reports of the markets made, and information given, which cannot be obtained early in the day. Therefore neither the broker nor his clerk can count upon getting away very early at any time of the year; and, even when business sinks to its lowest summer ebb, it often happens that correspondence appears to grow in proportion as brokerage dwindles, so that there is at least some ground for the Stock Exchange complaint that, the less business there is about, the more letters are needed to deal with it.

At the beginning of the last century the Stock Exchange was housed in a modest edifice in Capel Court, for the erection of which space had to be made by sweeping away several other buildings-amongst them a famous boxing saloon, over the loss of which there arose loud lamentations from the sporting fraternity. The building was far smaller than that which does duty to-day, for extensions have been steadily going on all through its history. Prior to 1801, various rendezvous were used by dealers in stocks and shares for the pursuit of their business. The most famous and best-known Jonathan's Coffee-House in Change Alley, Cornhill. Other contiguous alleys had their coffee-houses, where the same sort of business went on; while in the Royal Exchange, in the Rotunda of the Bank of England, and in St Paul's Cathedral itself, bargaining and dealing in stocks and shares have gone on from time to time. It was Laud who declared, when Bishop of London, that St Paul's Cathedral was no longer to be used for this purpose.

For a long time the term 'stock-jobber' was used with