Free Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page A

York.
    MAIN INDUSTRY. Wall Street has been a commercial center ever since the British took over.
    • They immediately set up a number of “exchanges”—open, shed-like buildings used for trading commodities like fur, molasses, and tobacco—on Wall Street.
    • About 100 years later, the first stocks and bonds were sold on the street. At the end of the Revolutionary war, the Colonies were so deeply in debt that the first Congress issued $80 million in bonds (government IOUs). Stocks were added two years later, when Alexander Hamilton (then Secretary of the Treasury) established the nation’s first bank, the Bank of the United States, and offered shares to the public.
    New York Exchange. Stocks and bonds soon became a booming business, and in 1792 a group of 24 brokers decided to create an informal exchange to specialize in these “paper transactions.” They signed a document known as the “Buttonwood Agreement” (named after the tree on Wall Street where the group met), in which they agreed to trade only among themselves and to charge customers a minimum 25% commission. These men are considered the original members of the New York Stock Exchange.
    Ohio has 22 roller coasters—the most of any state.
    • When conditions on the street got too crowded, the exchange moved into a coffeehouse, then rented a room at 40 Wall Street. New members were required to pay an initiation fee of not less than $25; the amount varied, depending on the location of their seat in the room. This is how traders came to buy “a seat on the exchange.”
    • By 1848, the prestigious New York Stock Exchange and Board had absorbed all other exchanges on Wall Street and was conducting business in an orderly and unexciting manner: the chairman called the name of each stock twice a day and any trading was completed before moving on.
    American Exchange . Meanwhile, those who couldn’t afford to become members continued to trade on the street after-hours, and became known as “curb brokers.” For this army of opportunists, the action was in stocks considered too speculative by members of “The Big Board”—especially railroads and mining companies created after the discovery of gold in California.
    • By the late 1890s, some of the brokers on “The Curb Exchange” could afford to rent offices in nearby buildings. Telephone clerks took orders and shouted them out the window to the brokers below, who wore loud checkered jackets and hats, from bright green derbies to pith helmets, so their clerks could spot them in the crowded street. When the shouting got out of hand, a system of hand signals (some of which are still used today) was developed to pass on price and volume information.
    • This entire scene moved indoors in 1921. And in 1953, the New York Curb Exchange, its name since 1928, became the American Stock Exchange, the second largest exchange on Wall Street.
    MISCELLANY. The term “broker” comes from the french brochier , meaning someone who broaches, or breaks, a wine keg. It was originally used to refer to entrepreneurs who bought wine by the barrel, “broke it open,” and sold it by the cup.
    Americans spent $2 billion on commercial weight loss programs in 1990.

MALCOLM X SPEAKS
    Malcolm X was one of the most controversial—and significant—figures in recent American history.
    “You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.”
    “It’s easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power—the power of dollarism.”
    “I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
    “I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want