It also permits dealing in shares not listed in the main exchange, and in certain mining shares, generally excluded from the other. In these cases it prescribed a form of listing requirements, but the original listing of securities is very rarely availed of. The rules also provide for dealing in grain, petroleum, and other products. Wheat is, however, at present the only commodity actively dealt in, and this is due solely to the permission to trade in smaller lots than the Produce Exchange unit of 5000 bushels. There are 1225 members, about 450 active, and memberships have sold in recent years at from $650 to $2000. In general the methods of conducting business are similar to those of the larger exchange, and subject to the same abuses. Very strained relations have existed between the two security exchanges since the lesser one undertook in 1886 to deal in stocks. The tension has been increased by the methods by which the Consolidated obtains the quotations of the other, through the use of the “tickers” conveying them. It is probable that without the use of these instruments the business of the Consolidated Exchange would be paralyzed; yet the right to use them rests solely upon a technical point in a judicial decision which enjoins their removal. COGNATE SUBJECTS HOLDING COMPANIES Connected with operations on the Stock Exchange are a class of manipulations originating elsewhere. The values of railway securities, for example, depend upon the management of the companies issuing them, the directors of which may use their power to increase, diminish, or even extinguish them, while they make gains for themselves by operations on the Exchange. They may advance the price of a stock by an unexpected dividend, or depress it by passing an expected one. They may water a stock by issuing new shares, with no proportionate addition to the productive assets of the company, or load it with indebtedness, putting an unexpected lien on the shareholders’ property. Such transactions affect not only the fortunes of the shareholders, who are designedly kept in ignorance of what is transpiring, but also the value of investments in other similar companies the securities of which are affected sympathetically. Railroad wrecking was more common in the last half-century than it is now, but we have some glaring examples of it in the débris of our street railways to-day. The existence and misuse of such powers on the part of directors are a menace to corporate property and a temptation to officials who are inclined to speculate, leading them to manage the property so as to fill their own pockets by indirect and secret methods.