The Story of Wall Street

New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1931. Third printing. Hardcover. Very Good. Hardcover in green cloth lettered in black. Third printing (January, 1931) stated. 362 pp. with index. Froontipiece photogaph of Wall Street looking west toward Trinity Church and with state of Washington on the steps of the Sub-Tresaury building in the foreground. 13 additional full page plates in the text. Very good, foxing to the prelims and lesser to the frontis and title page. Originally published the year of the great market crash (1929), a history of Wall Street in lower Manhattan as it became the financial center of the world. The 18th century years are briefly covered as is the Tontine Coffee House which was the informaal "stock and bond" exchange. The tale ramps up in the mid-19th century when manipulators like Jacob Little and Daniel Drew and the earliest magnates like Cornelius Vanderbilt held sway. Jay Gould and his attempt ot corner the gold market in 1869 is written about as is the coming of the industrial era and the railroad monopolies, Rockefeller and oil, Carnegie and steel, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, William Durant and others of the automobile industry, World War I, and finally the emergence of the more modernly recognizable New York Stock Exchange.