WALL STREET: Any Stocks Today?

Because there was no need for it in the golden ’20s and no point to it in the depressed ’30s, Wall Streeters stopped ringing doorbells. They just sat at their desks, did business over the phone. But last week New York Stock Exchange President Emil Schram thought it was time for the Exchange to try to “sell” the market out of its slump. Schram wanted to “interest the public to buy securities regularly as a means of producing income, much as they have learned to purchase life insurance as a means of protection.”

To do so, the Exchange will run a half-million-dollar advertising campaign next year to try to clear up “the unfamiliarity among savers, particularly in the labor and farm groups, with corporate securities.” The Exchange will plug stock purchases as a regular part of the family saving program. The specific target: earners of $5,000 a year or less. Said one hopeful Stock Exchange member: they “constitute the hope of the financial community.”