Every one connected with the New York Stock Exchange knows that this suggestion, like all the others made by the Commission, was received with approval by all hands, and, if a hard and fast rule could have been devised to meet not merely the spirit but the letter of the recommendation, the Governors of the Exchange would have put it into instant operation. But there are difficulties in the way, and one of the duties of the Governors is to consider very carefully all sides of each perplexing question that comes before them, not merely in the interests of the Stock Exchange, but with due regard to the common law and the interests of the public. Margin trading is a matter of contract, and “the right of one private person to extend credit to another,” as the Chairman of the Hughes Commission himself points out, “is simply the right to make a contract, which, under the Federal Constitution, cannot be impaired by any State Legislature.”[23] Here is a very considerable difficulty in the way of restricting margin trading, and one that is not fully understood by the outsider. He is prone to speak of contracts thus made as “gambling transactions,” missing altogether the essential point that there is a vast difference between a transaction with a contract behind it, enforceable at law, and one that has to do with bucket-shops and roulette, in which there is no contract, and is expressly prohibited by law. No matter what his intent may have been when he bought, and no matter what margin the broker accepted--the buyer has the right to demand his securities at any time, and the broker must always be prepared to deliver them; conversely, the broker may compel the buyer to pay for and to receive the securities he has bought. Motives and methods have nothing whatever to do with the transaction.