"Forthright and Realistic"

Besides main plot, many a great drama has at least one subplot. Main plot in the dramatic reform of the U. S. market place reached its climax when the New York Stock Exchange reorganized. Last week the subplot reached its climax as the nation's second biggest securities market, the New York Curb Exchange, finally produced a thoroughgoing plan of reorganization. This followed a behind-the-scenes fencing series much like that which occurred behind the Big Board.

On the Stock Exchange, the Old Guard was finally humbled by the Richard Whitney incident after a long battle with reform elements headed by Brokers Paul Shields, John Hanes and E. A. Pierce.

On the Curb the reform element was headed by an E. A. Pierce & Co. partner named Jerome Chester Cuppia, who, although he still sports the waxed mustache of the '90s, is in 1938 a member of more exchanges (14) than anyone else in the U. S. Way back in 1930 Jerry Cuppia suggested a paid president for the Curb, but he might as well have proposed to move the Curb back outdoors. His continued pressure for reform finally got him in so bad with the Old Guard that it blocked his re-election as a governor early this year.

Undaunted, Jerry Cuppia kept demanding reform, joined forces with such men as Howard Sykes, independent broker, Henry C. Brunie of L. A. Mathey & Co., Theodore V. D. Berdell of Berdell Brothers. Eventually the Old Guard permitted the appointment of a committee to investigate reorganization. The hollowness of the committee's proposal was echoed by the silence with which SEC Chairman William O. Douglas met it. Furthermore, it outraged many a Curb member with the suggestion that any who also belonged to the Big Board or were associated with a member be penalized.

Last week the reformers finally forced the Old Guard to capitulate and offered a plan genuinely patterned on that devised by the Conway Committee for the Big Board, including paid president, public representation, democratic committee rule. This time SEC Chairman Douglas commented: "Forthright and realistic." Curb members, who are voting officially this week, showed their sentiments by accepting the plan 275-to-1 in a straw poll which was still incomplete at week's end.

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