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Show WALL STREET HAS DULL YEARj New York, Jan. 1 The year 1913 will be long remembered in Wall street as one of the dullest in a decade. dec-ade. In 1912, when stock and bond sales on the exchange aggregated l3017.':.".nno shares and $672,000,000 respectively, re-spectively, this year shows a decrease in stock" sales of 44 700.000 shares and in bonds of $1,701,000,000. The recent re-cent spurt of activity at a higher price level, together with an increased demand de-mand for bonds and other investment Issues has, however, given rise to a hope among bankers and brokers that a recovery is under way. Of the 1,1 00 members of the stock exchange, It Is estimated that less iii mail cacai mm than half are now actively engaged in the market, and probably one-fifth of the whole may be classed as "traders" "trad-ers" brokers who buy or sell almost al-most exclusively for their own account ac-count The balance of the active membership mem-bership consists of commission houses man of which used to have extensive exten-sive out of town connections, with which they kept In touch by private telegraph and telephone wires. These accessories whose trading involved heavy Investments, have been practically practi-cally abandoned, as have many of the branch offices maintained in uptown New York and in adjacent cities. Not only have commission houses failed to make expenses during the year, but a substantial percentage of the trading element frequently found itself "whlpsawed," whether on the long or short side, by reason of the market's narrow character. The year has witnessed many withdrawals from the street by individuals and firms, although al-though tJaese have been lees numer- J ous than expected a few weeks ago. Among the firms which wound up their affairs with the end of the year were two of the highest standing not only as brokers but in the foreign exchange ex-change and commercial paper fields as well, Several Philadelphia and Baltimore brokerage firms which for years held close relations with this center, also announced their retirement. retire-ment. Of the so-called market leaders or speculative favorites, which number scarcely more than a half dozen, onlv Reading was today on a parity with its price of a year ago. The others were from five to twenty points under, un-der, while Canadian Pacific and New Haven were lower by more than fifty point. |