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It was front-page news whenever the stock market went haywire. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper brought this scene to its readers in 1872. A buying frenzy was created in the stock of the Erie Railroad Company following the ouster of Jay Gould as the company’s president. The paper noted the following about investors: “[They] acted as if they were insane, and had lost all restraint. If the vicinity of the Stock Exchange is a busy one ordinarily, the scene then was beyond description. Even age was not proof against the infection. Gray-headed men rushed from the Exchange to their offices, and from their offices back to the Exchange, in common with the boys who act as messengers for the brokers. Time never in their eyes had the value that it possessed then to them. A moment gained was a fortune won. Omnibuses, hacks, drays, trucks, wagons, were utterly disregarded. People ran under the horses, and narrowly escaped.”

When all else was madness, the telegraph operator on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange remained calm as he transmitted stock prices. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper noted, “He carries his instrument on his arm, as a conductor does his lantern. The connection between the wires and the instrument is by means of a flexible wire, which gives the operator freedom to move about near the presiding officer’s desk. He wears a straight-brimmed hat, and has a sphinx-like countenance.”

JAY HOSTER has been collecting Wall Street material for more than 20 years. As a member of the Museum of American Finance, he has written articles for the museum’s magazine on the development of the term blue chip and the background to an investing classic, Fred Schwed Jr.’s Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?

In the midst of the chaos, messengers were trying to catch the attention of their employers on the floor of the exchange.

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