One of the most important functions of the Stock Exchange is, as we have seen, the almost automatic ease with which it directs reservoirs of capital into channels of usefulness in the world’s industry and commerce. The layman may feel that this use of the Stock Exchange does not affect him as an individual, but it does, and vitally. Every merchant and every manufacturer, great and small, all over the world, is directly benefited by it. One may see, for example, securities of railway equipment companies quoted for weeks at a low level. This shows that the business of these companies is not profitable, and it serves to discourage owners of capital from undertaking new enterprises in that direction, because the securities of such companies cannot be sold. Moreover, it shows investors, as plainly as words can tell, that this is an unsafe and unprofitable form of investment. Reverse the situation, and lines of industry are revealed where high and advancing prices of securities indicate a rising tide of business, with an outlook for large profits in the future. Capital then takes hold cheerfully; there is a market for the new securities and a proper basis for fresh commercial development, because investors and speculators have learned from the published daily quotations of these Stock Exchange securities that there is good warrant for the flow of capital into such channels, and that a reasonably safe return will follow an investment in them. In commenting upon these functions of the Stock Exchange, Mr. Conant says: “Through the publicity of knowledge and prices, the bringing of a multitude of fallible judgments upon this common ground, to an average, there is afforded to capital throughout the world an almost unfailing index of the course in which new production should be directed.” Through the mechanism of the Stock Exchange, therefore, the public determines the direction in which new capital shall be applied to new undertakings. In this way our great railways were built, our Western country opened to progress, and our vast industrial undertakings made possible.