Tribunes of the People

Not quite a year ago, the then president of the New York Stock Exchange, Charles R. Gay, yielding to the demand of SEC Chairman William O. Douglas, started looking for a man to serve on a committee to revamp the Exchange's constitution. He picked a nonmember industrialist whose company was listed on the Big Board--Chairman Carle Cotter Conway of Continental Can Co. The recommendations of the Conway Committee eventually became the basis for the spectacular reform of the world's chief market place (TIME, Feb. 7, et seq.). Last week upon the nomination of Exchange President William McC. Martin Jr. (who got his big chance on the Conway Committee), Carle Conway and two liberal-minded Chicagoans. President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago and General Robert Wood, president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., were unanimously elected to the 32-man board of governors of the Exchange as "representatives of the public." Until 1934 the Stock Exchange was run as a club, generally excluded outside viewpoints from its deliberations. That year an "advisory group" of ten non-members headed by A. A. Berle Jr. was created, allowed to sit in. This body is given much credit for the growth of the reform spirit in the Exchange, but the Conway Committee decided: "We believe the public viewpoint may more effectively be expressed only when nonmember representatives are actually full members of the governing board. . . ." Last week SEC Chairman Douglas told the Exchange: "You are to be congratulated upon your success in persuading such outstanding men to serve. . . ."

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