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In his big new modernistic building, the only completely air-conditioned building in Canada, President Housser has every mechanical gadget known to U. S. markets and a few more besides. Neatest innovation is an automatic quotation service, not for actual transactions, which are history, but for the going bid & ask prices. Operating on the same principle as the Teleregister electric quotation board common to U. S. board rooms, the service clicks up the bids & asks on the sides of the nine hexagonal trading posts where brokers can see them at a glance. Moreover, the same service is available to anyone with a "dial ticker" in his office. To get a quotation direct from the floor on, say, International Nickel, a customers' man merely dials Nickel's number (in) on an instrument which looks like an enclosed typewriter with a telephone dial instead of a keyboard. Within a few seconds the dial tickers tap out the going bid & ask for Nickel.
So thoroughly mechanized is the whole new $750,000 Toronto Stock Exchange that floor members had to take lessons in how to do business there. Actual trading on the new floor was to begin this week at a brief British ceremony with the visitors' gallery closed. Over the regular ticker at 9:50 a. m. was to go an address from President Housser, followed by congratulatory messages from the Honorable Vinent Massey, Canadian High Commissioner in London, and from Chairman Robert Barclay Pearson of the venerable London Stock Exchange. By remote control the chairman of the London Stock Exchange was then to sound the opening gong at 10 a. m. Toronto time (same as New York). Prearranged, the first transaction was to be between President Housser and Norman C. Urquhart, his stout, decisive vice president. The stock: International Nickel, bluest of Canada's blue chips.
Fusion Man. Logical for more than investment reasons was the choice of International Nickel for the first sale. Trading in Toronto is divided horizontally between regular listings and a so-called "curb," which is physically and financially a part of the Exchange, and has identical membership. A dying institution, the "curb" corresponds roughly to the unlisted section of smaller U. S. exchanges. But Toronto trading is also divided vertically between a mining section and an industrial section in somewhat the same manner as the New York Stock Exchange segregates stocks and bonds. In Toronto, International Nickel is rated an industrial, because of its fabricating activities. It is also the world's premier nickel miner, so that it represents a happy blend of mine and mill.
Since 1934 when it merged with the old Standard Stock & Mining Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange, too, has represented a blend of mining and industry, though not always a happy one. To the outside world the Toronto Exchange is an exclusive club of 113 members, many of whom are sons and grandsons of oldtime members who paid as little as $5 for their original seats (today's price $90,000). Internally the clublike atmosphere has been ruffled by a tendency to line up into an industrial faction and a mining faction. Harry Housser, a fusion candidate popular with both sides, was made president last year in what has turned out to be a successful attempt to ease the strain.