Seat

Last week a seat on the Stock Exchange was sold for $135,000-- a new record. People who had been astounded by the price of $126,000 paid two weeks ago (TIME, Oct. 26) sharpened their amazement at the unprecedented activity of the last few weeks with the remembrance that in 1914 a seat on the Exchange could be bought for $34,000.

The number of memberships on the Exchange is limited to 1,100,700 of them active memberships, the rest held by elderly millionaires as souvenirs of their youth, or by investment banking firms which though engaged in underwriting and reorganization work, keep their seats as a matter of tradition.