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HE Magnitude and Necessity of the Institution
 

Its History and Allied Interests.    By Well-Known  Financial Writers
Illustrated with Sixty-Five Views and About Five Hundred and Twenty-five Portraits

EDITED, PUBLISHED AND COPYRIGHTED,   1897, BY MOSES KING

Associate Editors : Col. A. B. De FRECE, Ph.D., and HENRY E. WALLACE
 

THIS simple account of " Wall Street" and of the Stock Exchange, with its
accompanying illustrations, is intended for the millions of people through¬
out the country who are deeply interested in the "Street," and who hardly
know what it looks like, what it really is, or who are its leaders at this time.

When the Hollanders established themselves at Manhattan nearly three
centuries ago they built a protecting wall or stockade across the island about
half a mile beyond the village of New Amsterdam,. This fortification 'gave its
name to Wall Street, which with Lombard Street in London is one of the two
great financial thoroughfares of the world. In New York's Colonial "days the
town hall was in Wall Street at the corner of Nassau Street, where the Sub-
 

Treasury of the United States is now. The latter building succeeded the Congress
Hall built for the meeting of the first Congress, on the balcony of which,
where the Washington statue now stands, George Washington was inaugurated
as the first President of the United States in 1789.

When the Federal Government was established and New York began its
career as the great seaport and business city of the country, some of the earliest
banks had their establishments in Wall Street. Several of them are still on the
identical sites which they have occupied for a century or so, like the Bank of New
York, which is one of the three first banks formed in the United States, its organ¬
ization dating back to 1784.    Alexander Hamilton was its founder, and its original
 

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NEW YORK CITY:   BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF MANHATTAN  BOROUGH, ONE OF THE FIVE BOROUGHS

THE   FINANCIAL  CENTRE   OF  THE  WESTERN   HEMISPHERE.    THE  SECOND  LARGEST  CITY  OF  THE  WORLD, SECOND  ONLY  TO   LONDON   IN   SIZE  AND  FINANCIAL  IMPORTANCE