On the Stock Exchange practice of making a market, a couple of important judgments were delivered in 1892. In the course of one of them Mr. Justice Wright remarked that "if persons for their own purposes of speculation create an artificial price in the market by transactions which are not real, but are made at a nominal premium merely for the purpose of inducing the public to take shares, they are guilty of as gross a fraud as has ever been committed and of a fraud that can be criminally brought home to them." In 1895, during a notable boom in South African mining shares, there occurred what was known as the Battle of Throgmorton Street--between members of the Stock Exchange and the police. Members had to appear day after day on a charge of obstruction before the magistrate, who suggested that when the Stock Exchange was closed they might, instead of obstructing the thoroughfare, arrange to use the Royal Exchange. Far more serious strife, again closely connected with South African affairs, arose in the closing days of the year, when the Jameson Raid into Boer territory was followed by a severe slump in prices. The political tension of which this raid was an outcome ultimately developed into the Transvaal War, which resulted in a long period of Stock Exchange stagnation and depression. In 1896, and again in 1897, the 2-3/4 per cent. Consols touched practically 114, the highest price ever recorded. The heavy Government borrowing in connection with the war, and the reduction of the rate of interest to 2-1/2 per cent., have since reduced the price to below 73. But in spite of the stagnation and depression, the prosperity of the Stock Exchange continued to increase. Owing to the pressure upon its space, the offices of its Share and Loan Department, an important department of administration, had to be removed from the Stock Exchange building altogether, about the time when, in 1901, the Stock Exchange was celebrating its centenary. During the past decade there have been far-reaching changes in the constitution and practice of the institution. With the object of gradually abolishing the dual control of members and proprietors, a rule requiring new members to purchase one or more shares was enacted; a long-standing bone of contention between jobbers and brokers was removed by rules more clearly defining and separating their functions; and the vexed question of brokers' commissions has led at last to the establishment of a minimum scale, with the object of preventing under-cutting by competitive firms. The long period of stagnation and depression was broken by the great rubber share boom of the spring of 1910, when business reached proportions never before witnessed in the history of the Stock Exchange. CHAPTER XV A BROKER'S DAY