Furthermore, any negligence on the member’s part in this important matter, or in other matters affecting the general welfare of the Stock Exchange, places him at once within the all-embracing grasp of that one of the Exchange’s by-laws which has to do with “any act detrimental to the interests of the Exchange.” This is a large order, and its importance is well understood by the members. They know, and all those who so freely criticise the Stock Exchange could find out if they inquired, that the power of the Board of Governors to supervise every action of its members is vastly greater than any power that could be vested in the courts. There are constitutional limits to the authority of common law; there are no limits whatever to the powers of the governors in dealing with members. This leads us to consider another popular criticism of the Stock Exchange, based on its unwillingness to abandon its present organization and incorporate under State regulation. The public seems to feel that this reluctance to submit to State or Federal control shows that the institution is trying to conceal something, yet nothing could be further from the fact. The Exchange does not incorporate because the interests of the public, which it is bound to conserve, would suffer enormously by such a step. “In its present form,” says the _Wall Street Journal_, “the Stock Exchange is a private organization. It can inspect any member’s books at any moment. If it suspects him of wrongdoing it can tap his telephone wire, and has done so in the past. It can terminate his membership for conduct which no legislation could possibly touch. One reason, in fact, for its admittedly high standard of probity is the power, at once democratic and despotic, exercised by the Governing Committee elected by all the members. “But if the Stock Exchange were reorganized under State supervision, much of this power would be taken away. Members would possess rights which no governing committee could ignore. They could resort to practices legally right and ethically wrong, which under the present system would be visited by swift punishment. Any member of the public, now, who can show the Stock Exchange committee an act by a broker toward him legally defensible but morally wrong, can secure that broker’s expulsion from the Stock Exchange. Under State incorporation he could only obtain redress by prolonged litigation.... No legislative safeguards are needed. The Stock Exchange now possesses a power of supervision over its members which neither Congress nor the State legislature could give. The only power our lawmakers really possess in the matter is to limit that supervision; and for this, if for no other reason, the Stock Exchange should fight incorporation to the last, and should take every proper means of publicity to range public opinion behind it.”[47]