“But the Paris Bourse does not owe its prosperity to its organization. Seventy ministerial appointees entrusted with the negotiation of one hundred and thirty billions of transferable securities are powerful personalities. They would be more powerful if they were but thirty-five. They would be more powerful if there were but twenty of them, or ten, or five, or even one, if there were in the market but one autocrat, a single arbiter of securities, centralizing bids and offers, and the king of the Bourse, just as we see in America an oil king and a steel king. In such a case the soundness of a market is more seeming than real. If that system had been applied to provisions and merchandise, infinitely more necessary for consumption than rentes or shares in companies, the market for wine, bread, and meat, appropriated by a few barons, might, perhaps, be stupendously high, but in this respect experience speaks in favor of freedom of trade only. “It seems, therefore, necessary that public and private credit should enjoy the benefit of an organization more pliable and more in harmony with the general condition of a country’s commerce. Let us therefore beware of mistaking the appearance of force for force itself--a deception that should impress us no more than the sight of the effigies of iron-clad warriors, standing on rich trappings in a military museum. If our financial market were opened to all who have funds and understand the profession, it would be stronger still. If the market’s favorable situation were distributed among several hundred individuals, the division of risks would render the market more stable, competition would secure for our market the desired elasticity, and, if wanted, regulation under the supervision of the Minister of Finance would create a condition halfway between unlimited freedom, which, with more or less reason, scares so many people, and monopoly, which is an old outfit, in no way suiting our customs, and disturbing the harmony of our laws without rendering the services expected from it.”[124] From the point of view of an American this would seem to be an unanswerable argument. If seventy men are constituted sole managers of a market for 130,000,000,000 francs of transferable securities, one of two things is sure to happen; either a public market will establish itself outside these seventy men, or the seventy will prevent the establishment of the public market. The first of these alternatives has occurred in the establishment of the coulisse; the second would have occurred if the stockbrokers could have accomplished it.