Shares of trading and industrial companies and of public debts became the objects of a regular commerce, which was not confined by national boundaries, but which drew capital from all sources. When shares of the Dutch East India Company were put on the market in 1602 they were taken up to a considerable extent by capitalists of Antwerp who no longer had use for their money at home; much of the money needed to rebuild London after the fire of 1666, and a large part of the capital of the Bank of England, came from the Dutch; shares of the English companies trading with Asia and Africa circulated freely on the Amsterdam exchange; a loan to the German Emperor was floated in London. =177. Growth of speculation; early abuses.=—Modern forms of speculative business grew up with the exchanges. A pamphlet published as early as 1542 described the “monstrous thing” that Antwerp merchants had devised; they _bet_ with each other on the course of foreign exchange, one saying it would be 2 per cent, one 3 per cent, etc., and afterwards they settled by paying the differences. This is substantially the same operation as that which is carried on regularly to-day. When the trade in shares of stock was established traders would speculate on a rise or a fall, or a combination of both. Shrewd speculators organized a system of news gathering and forwarding which gave them the first knowledge of important events affecting the price of securities, and enabled them to anticipate the turn of the market. London speculators got word through a private channel of the signing of the treaty of Rijswijk in 1697, a day before the English ambassador arrived with the official announcement; their eagerness to buy bank stock aroused suspicion, and the reason for their purchase appeared when the news was published and the price of the stock rose from 84 to 97. Underhanded methods of trade were common. Speculators would set afloat rumors to depress the price of securities, and then buy in. One day during the reign of Anne in England a well-dressed man rode furiously through the street proclaiming the death of the Queen. The news spread and the funds fell; the Jew interest on the exchange bought eagerly, and were suspected later of being responsible for the hoax, though it was not proved against them. The Englishman, Child, who made a fortune in speculation, and who was called in a pamphlet of 1719 “the original of stock-jobbing,” would have one set of brokers spread rumors of disaster, and sell a little of his stock publicly, while another set bought for him “with privacy and caution”; in a few weeks he would reverse the process and come out ten or twenty per cent ahead.