ock quotations became a regular feature of metropolitan areas like New York City.
By 1792, the stock brokerage business had grown so much that instead of allowing auctioneers and merchants to conduct the business, as they had done traditionally, ôspecialists in securities tradingö were qualified before the Mayor with an oath that they would ôtruly and faithfully execute the duties of a stockbroker.ö On February 22, 1792, the securities brokers opened up a stock exchange at 22 Wall Street. In May of that year, those same stockbrokers came together and agreed on a list of service fees that would in effect exclude the auctioneers who had previously been privy to engage in trading. Though outdoor trading was done at a buttonwood tree between 68 and 70 Wall Street for some time, in 1793, the traders moved to the Tontine Coffee House at Wall and Water Streets. These dealings became the beginnings of the New York Stock Exchange, although the formal beginnings of that institution did not take place until 1817.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, the western frontier was the Allegheny Mountains, beyond which were the rich fertile farmlands of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. To reach these natural resources, however, required one to traverse dangerous and sometimes impassable roadways on a journey that took weeks. In 1817, this need to expand westward, combined with the competition of rival ports in Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans, led then-New York Governor Dewitt Clinton to announce his plan to build a waterway that would run from a canal in Buffalo on the eastern shore of Lake Erie to Albany on the upper Hudson River. Clinton convinced the New York State legislature to appropriate $7 million for the project, which took eight years to complete.
ClintonÆs projections about the impact of the Erie Canal on New York were indeed correct. As part of the same state project as the Erie Canal, several canals lat...