(2) The act aimed to establish legal certainty by means of registration. It proved a direct incentive to fraud. The customer was not legally liable on his contracts; therefore, every reckless and dishonest little plunger, who could get a broker to trust him, could take a “flyer” with everything to gain and nothing to lose. Cases increased rapidly in the courts and the worst element of the public was active to the relative exclusion of the better. Instances even occurred where a man would play both sides of the market at the offices of two different brokers and simply refuse to settle on the losing contract. (3) As affecting this phase of the question, references should be made again to the transfer of business to foreign exchanges. Morally and socially it is as bad for the German public to speculate in cheap mining stocks on the London Exchange as to do so at home. The flow of German funds into the market for South African securities would indicate a further way in which the purposes of the act were defeated. (4) Finally, the question must be faced of the effect of eliminating the public from the speculative market even if it could be accomplished. It is supposed sometimes that such a result would be all benefit and no injury. On the contrary, the real and important function of speculation in the field of business can only be performed by a broad and open market. Though no one would defend individual cases of recklessness or fail to lament the disaster and crime sometimes engendered, the fact remains that a “purely professional market” is not the kind of market which best fulfills the service of speculation. A broad market with the participation of an intelligent and responsible public is necessary. A narrow professional market is less serviceable to legitimate investment and trade and much more susceptible of manipulation.[85] It is not surprising that such a law, enacted to meet political clamor, in defiance of the recommendations of the committee, and in the face of all the economic experiences of the century, should have proved a fiasco in a double sense. Not only did it fail to accomplish its purpose, but, as we have seen, it brought about a new chain of evils vastly more distressing to German commercial development than all the evils that gave it birth. The report of the Deutsche Bank for 1900 said: “The prices of all industrial securities have fallen. This decline has been felt all the more as, by reason of the ill-conceived Bourse Law, it struck the public with full force without being softened through covering purchases of speculative interests.” Four years later the same bank reported: “A serious political surprise would cause the worst panic, because there are no longer any dealers to take up the securities which, at such times, are thrown upon the market by the speculating public.” In 1905 the bank again forcibly urged the revision of the law in these words: