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This book project began with my pondering how, why, and when did average middle-class Americans, seared by the memory of the 1929 Great Crash, come again to trust and participate in the stock market. As I delved into my research, I became increasingly interested in the NYSE’s side of the story—the transformational process by which the NYSE Board of Governors and retail member brokerage houses came to want to court small investors. To arrive at my conclusions, I consulted a multitude of materials. The following discussion of sources, while not all encompassing, should provide a path for other researchers interested in how the NYSE during the height of the Cold War sought to democratize the stock market and thus create a “nation of small shareowners.” Primary Sources Extensive research at the New York Stock Exchange Archive (NYSEA) in New York City proved pivotal to my understanding the Board of Governors’ evolving marketing practices as well as their thoughts regarding the proper scale and scope of equity investing. The Own Your Share of American Business (OYS) promotional campaign, inaugurated in 1954, was a major turning point in the NYSE’s marketing relationship with small investors, and an abundance of files on this campaign proliferate at the NYSEA. To grasp the trajectory in Exchange attitudes, I explored many files from before, during, and after the OYS era. Particularly illuminating were the papers of Ruddick C. Lawrence (RCL). The charismatic Lawrence served as vice president of Market Development at the NYSE during the entire OYS campaign. Rud Lawrence kept copious notes and scrapbooks of his years at the NYSE, and it was my real pleasure to be able to interview him in 1999. Years earlier, in 1984, Lawrence generously gave of his time to provide the Exchange with a detailed oral history, which we also discussed. The transcript of the 1984 oral history interview (conducted by Exchange archivist Deborah Gardner) is preserved in Box 4 of Lawrence’s papers at the NYSEA. Three other boxes of his papers at the NYSEA also are rich in information. The announcement of the debut of OYS can be found in the 1954 Campaign Folder, Box 1, Press Relations, Public Information Advertising Campaigns, 1954–1964. Listed company tie-in advertisements can be located in the folder for Press Relations/Public Information Advertising Campaigns, 1965–1973, in RCL Box 2. In RCL Box 3 as well as in Box 22, Alpha Files, information may be found on the NYSE’s Monthly Investment Plan (MIP), among other topics. Lawrence worked closely with G. Keith Funston (NYSE president, 1951–1967). At the NYSEA, Boxes 7 and 8, Record Group 2.2, contain many of Funston’s noteworthy speeches on Essay on Sources 222 Essay on Sources the theme of spreading shareownership, such as “America Embraces a People’s Capitalism,” “Broader Share Ownership,” “A Nation of Share Owners,” “Who Owns America,” and “Paging Joe Public.” At Harvard Business School’s Baker Library Historical Collections Department (BL), I found more useful information, including the Dickinson Lecture Funston gave on April 20, 1954, entitled “Wanted—More Shareowners.” See Folder, Funston, George, Keith, “Wanted— More Shareowners,” CFL 18.13A, Archives Vertical File, CC2.13.5C-CFL 49, Box 14, BL. NYSE Annual Reports helped give me a flavor for how the NYSE Board was communicating its shareownership goals, methods, and results to both the Exchange community and the outside public. In the late 1930s, the Exchange’s Annual Reports began to expand in content, including, for instance, an annual letter from the president prefacing the Report. By the 1950s, the Reports began to include more information on the NYSE’s public relations activities. For historical trading volume, stock turnover, and other statistics, I relied in part on the NYSE’s annual Fact Books. Various “how to invest” pamphlets, published by the NYSE in the 1950s and 1960s and available at the NYSEA, help demonstrate ways in which the Big Board tried to educate the public about the stock market’s virtues. At the same time, the Exchange endeavored to educate member firms and themselves about what Main Street thought of Wall Street. To that end, the NYSE’s Public Relations and Market Development compiled for internal use various studies of the stock market, and the Research and Statistics Department periodically assembled public transaction studies that depicted the investor composition of the stock market. As well, outside consultants and advertising agencies conducted reports on public attitudes about the stock market. See Alfred...

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