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Show Dont Condemn the Barrel Not so many years ago the nation's stock exchanges were, so to speak, in the nature of private clubs. Only a handful of people bought and sold securities. The change that has taken place in recent times is revolutionary. revo-lutionary. It is estimated that 15 million people now own stocks. Three fourths of them are in the medium or low income brackets under $10,000 a year per family. So the stock market has become a mass market. This gives great significance to the grave charges that have been brought against one of the country's exchanges charges that include price rigging and other derelictions and which, so far, have resulted in the resignation of a number of this particular par-ticular exchange's top executives. An intensive investigation is underway. As the Portland, Oregon, Journal puts it: "The inves tigators and the managements of the exchanges . . . have a vital and delicate job ahead of them. They must root out abuses in the present system without unduly undermining public confidence in the securities market as a whole." It will be a needless tragedy if public confidence is thus undermined. For, to take one example, the New York Stock Exchange, which is this country's principal organization of its kind, has gone to great lengths in pursuing strict self-policing policies, backed up by voluntarily imposed rules and regulations, which give the investor, large and small, every possible protection pro-tection against chicanery. If it turns out there has been a bad apple in the barrel, let's not condemn the whole barrel because of it. j |