The vocation of the specialist is one that causes frequent comment and ill-merited abuse. It has been charged that he sometimes exercises arbitrary power in executing his orders, and complaint is heard that the price at which he deals is not always a fair price. My observation is that four times out of five the fault lies, not with the specialist, but with the broker who gives him the order. The latter has been trying to do too much, he has held the order in his hand whilst engaged elsewhere in the hope of saving the commission for himself, and then, when he has “missed his market,” turns the order over to the specialist and shifts the responsibility to his shoulders. This is scarcely fair, and it simply should not happen. The customer protests at the delay and at the price; he is told the specialist is responsible, and straightway another voice joins the chorus that holds the specialist in abhorrence. Like the chairman of the House Committee of a club, the specialist is made to bear everybody’s burdens; he is the target for all the criticism that any one chooses to hurl at him. And yet he is one of the most useful and indispensable features of the Exchange machinery. Without him there would be no market whatever in very many securities; like the London jobber, he is constantly on the spot, ready to take chances by creating at his personal risk a market where none may have existed. If it be urged that the specialist should not speculate, but should confine himself solely to executing the orders on his books, it may be answered that in such a case he would often be useless, for in many instances the orders on his books are insufficient in volume to establish a close market or anything approaching it. By reason of his speculations a market is created; without them it may not exist. He speculates, therefore, for the same reason that jobbers in the London market speculate, and dealers in wheat, cotton, and wool. Like them, he must have goods on hand to supply the demand, and in the purchase of these goods (securities) he speculates, legitimately, on the hope or belief that buyers will appear.