If you want to buy, let us say, a piano, you go to the dealer and ask the price, and as he is the only person in the neighborhood who deals in pianos, you must either accept his offer or look elsewhere. But to look elsewhere takes time and labor; dealers in pianos are widely separated; moreover, there is no open competition among them such as you would like, and so finally when you have bought you feel perhaps you have not secured your money’s worth. You would have secured a much better bargain, no doubt, had there been twenty dealers in the room competing with each other, and a still better bargain had their number been fifty, or a hundred, or two hundred, because that would mean competition, and the more competition there is, in close contact and governed by rigid business rules, the more certain the approach to a perfect price. Everywhere in the world fairs and other gatherings of merchants are held at periodic intervals because people demand them in their effort to secure proper prices by competitive bidding and offering. One of the first travelers to penetrate the heart of Africa found among the natives this phenomenon of trade, showing that it is instinctive; indeed, it may be traced to the earliest known period in the history of any people. If you arise before daybreak in London and go to Billingsgate and Covent Garden, or in Paris to the _Halles Centrales_--Zola’s “Ventre de Paris”--you will find there the modern type of these markets in their utmost perfection.[1] This is why Exchanges exist, not only Stock Exchanges, but market-places of all kinds: Buyers seek the largest market they can get in order to obtain the lowest prices; sellers, in order to obtain the highest prices; and so it was learned long ago that economy of time and labor, as well as a theoretically perfect market, could be best secured by an organization under one roof of as many dealers in a commodity as could be found.[2] Bear in mind that this result, moreover, is best accomplished when the organization is so controlled by rigid rules of business morality as to insure to every one who does business there, great and small, rich and poor, an absolutely square deal. In such a market every purchase is made with the most thorough acquaintance with the conditions involved. Each dealer, each broker, each speculator, strives to obtain the best knowledge of the supply and demand, and the earliest news that may affect it, and each buyer or seller has an equal and a fair opportunity to profit by the resultant effect on the market of all these various agencies. The larger the body of brokers and traders, then, the more accurate the standards of value thus created. It is a pity you could not have bought your piano under such conditions.[3]