When Stocks Came in From the Cold

In 1920, the journalist Edwin C. Hill described the Curb Market, then operating on lower Broad Street, as “a roaring, swirling whirlpool” in an article in Munsey’s Magazine.
“It tears control of a gold-mine from an unlucky operator,” he wrote, “then pauses to auction a puppy-dog. It is like nothing else under the astonishing sky that is its only roof.”
Mr. Hill was not kidding about the puppy-dog, having witnessed a man offering 40 shares of a cocker spaniel at 10 cents a share. After the animal’s price rose to 23 cents per share, he handed it over for $9.20 to a gas specialist.