Official quotations are issued daily by the agency and appear in the public press. Corporations desiring their securities to be thus quoted are required to afford the agency certain information, which is, however, superficial and incomplete. There is nothing on the curb which corresponds to the listing process of the Stock Exchange. The latter, while not guaranteeing the soundness of the securities, gives a _prima facie_ character to those on the list, since the stock list committee takes some pains to learn the truth. The decision of the agent of the curb are based on insufficient data, and since much of the work relates to mining schemes in distant States and Territories, and foreign countries, the mere fact that a security is quoted on the curb should create no presumption in its favor; quotations frequently represent “wash sales,” thus facilitating swindling enterprises. EVILS OF UNORGANIZED STATUS Bitter complaints have reached us of frauds perpetrated upon confiding persons, who have been induced to purchase mining shares because they are quoted on the curb; these are frequently advertised in newspapers and circulars sent through the mails as so quoted. Some of these swindles have been traced to their fountainheads by the Post Office Department, to which complaint has been made; but usually the swindler, when cornered, has settled privately with the individual complainant, and then the prosecution has failed for want of testimony. Meanwhile the same operations may continue in many other places, till the swindle becomes too notorious to be profitable. Notwithstanding the lack of proper supervision and control over the admission of securities to the privilege of quotation, some of them are meritorious, and in this particular the curb performs a useful function. The existence of the cited abuses does not, in our judgment, demand the abolition of the curb market. Regulation is, however, imperative. To require an elaborate organization similar to that existing in the Exchanges would result in the formation of another curb free from such restraint. As has been stated, about 85 per cent. of the business of the curb comes through the offices of members of the New York Stock Exchange, but a provision of the constitution of that Exchange prohibits its members from becoming members of, or dealing, on, any other _organized_ Stock Exchange in New York. Accordingly, operators on the curb market have not attempted to form an organization. The attitude of the Stock Exchange is therefore largely responsible for the existence of such abuses as result from the want of organization of the curb market. The brokers dealing on the latter do not wish to lose their best customers, and hence they submit to these irregularities and inconveniences.