The system of settlements twice a month as employed in London is another method quite different from that employed in New York, and one, too, that seems to suffer by comparison with our system. On the New York Stock Exchange everything is settled on the day following the transaction. Each broker and each customer knows just where he stands, and every trade is settled in full when the next day ends. Tell an English broker that on a single day our Clearing-House settled and balanced transactions in more than 3,000,000 shares of an approximate value of 50,000,000 sterling and he gasps. He says that such a thing would be impossible in London, and he is right, it would be impossible indeed. Clearings in London vastly exceed ours, but they do not occur daily; indeed our system would not do at all in a centre that transacts, as London does, a large international business in which transfers must be sent hourly to Egypt and India and to all quarters of the globe. Daily clearings in such circumstances would be very troublesome and vexatious. The New York system, however, makes failures and defaults commendably rare, while the London system, by postponing the day of reckoning, actually invites over-extensions in speculation leading to failures that could not possibly occur here. To make this point clear to the layman it may be said concisely that the man who settles daily is in a safer position both toward himself and his creditors than is the man who postpones his settlement. The daily settlement protects the public, as well, by putting limits on speculative commitments. These matters are self-evident. A gentleman who was for many years identified with a London firm of jobbers, and who is now a member of the New York Stock Exchange and, therefore, quite familiar with the different methods employed in these Exchanges, tells me that the London system of brokers and jobbers, commission laws, and fortnightly settlements, is the best possible system for the London Exchange, while the very different methods employed in New York seem to him to be the best that can be devised for the New York Exchange. This may be true, since conditions governing the two markets are widely different. In New York the whole system is cash; in London, credit. Here brokers may accept business with considerable freedom, knowing that but a single day elapses before the reckoning; in London brokers exercise greater caution because they must trust their clients until settlement day.