The Commission also paid a compliment to the members in general in the mention of the fact that the absence of a written contract in the dealings between them had in practice no evil results, and that out of the millions of bargains transacted in the Stock Exchange, such a thing was hardly known as a dispute as to a contract or its terms. Moreover the Commission exonerated the Stock Exchange from the charge that it encouraged gambling. It found that the members with whom the purchases and sales of stocks and shares were effected were, in the majority of cases, entirely unable at the time of executing the orders to distinguish between those which were made speculatively and those which were connected with investment. The Commissioners did not think it practicable to render gambling business any more illegal than it already was. Those who indulged in it in the Stock Exchange, the Commission found, were mainly the younger and more necessitous members, and it suggested that the Committee should hold a restraining hand over them, meting out severe punishment where extravagant speculation had been indulged in or encouraged by a member. Closely connected with this subject was a recommendation as to the readmission of defaulters. It appeared that during the decade preceding the Commission's inquiry, 265 members had been in default, 116 had applied for readmission, and 105 had obtained it. The Commission expressed the opinion that such a proportion of readmissions was excessive, and that the rule of the Stock Exchange should be against the readmission of a defaulter except in very special circumstances, unless his default had been brought about by the conduct of others, and not through his own fault. It was also recommended that when a member was declared a defaulter, the fact should be communicated to the outside world, and this is now the invariable custom, a notice being sent to the Press for publication. In a half-hearted kind of way the Commission also recommended that the outside world should be admitted to the Stock Exchange, but this recommendation has never been carried out. The Commissioners declared that the public was able to rely upon reasonable speed and certainty in the transaction of business, and that there was as small a difference between the buying and the selling price of a security as could be obtained in any other market; yet they thought that if it were possible it would be desirable that the House should be open to the public, not because it would give a client any real control over the deal which his broker was carrying out for him, but because it might remove certain jealousy and suspicion which was created in some minds by the privacy of the House. Even in putting forth the suggestion thus mildly, the Commission admitted that the building was hardly adequate to the accommodation of its members, and that business might be impeded if strangers were admitted.