Warrior's Delay

As the gong brought trading to an end on the New York Stock Exchange one afternoon last week a group of men stepped forth upon the rostrum high over the paper-littered floor. One member of the group was Exchange President Charles Richard Gay, another Alfred Emanuel Smith, who was there to make a plea for New York's United Hospital Fund. Clerks were still yelling, messengers scurrying, tickers clacking. When Mr. Smith was introduced to the brokers even the sound-amplifying system could scarcely be heard above the din.

"Louder!" cried the floor brokers, most of whom had not the faintest idea why Al Smith had decided to pay them a visit. President Gay then made a welcoming speech but that, too, was lost in the Exchange's vasty spaces. "Louder! Louder!" shouted the brokers as Mr. Smith began to ask for hospital contributions. Desperate, officials ordered all Exchange machinery stopped for the duration of the Smith remarks. "This is the last place to explain that in the past six years we have been passing through a world-wide depression," rumbled the once Happy Warrior.

"Hospitals have received no new endowments. Returns from existing endowments have vanished or have been materially reduced." While Mr. Smith was pleading his high cause, suspension of nation-wide ticker service with the day's closing prices and final bid & ask quotations brought down a flood of startled inquiries and outraged protests by telephone and telegraph.

Brokerage offices were thrown into excited confusion. So besieged by questioners were the ticker services that their telephone operators could only answer : "Hold on a minute, please." Radio stations had to postpone quotation broadcasts. From coast to coast evening papers, whose Wall Street editions must wait for closing prices and bid & ask quotations, were held up while financial editors futilely tore their hair. Net result of the Stock Exchange's generous attention to Al Smith's warm-hearted plea was a renewed blast of criticism from the outraged Press, which was additionally irked because the Exchange had refused to admit photographers to snap Al Smith on the rostrum.

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