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The article discusses the art auction held at the Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., the biggest auction house in New York. It describes the concept of auctioning and features several notable dealers such as Joseph Duveen and Georges Wildenstein along with their bidding strategies. It also looks into the condition of the art market in relation to the law of supply and demand, as well as the customer's preferences.

The article focuses on a specialty shop Hammacher, Schlemmer & Co., located in New York, headed by Dominic Tampone since 1958. It is said that the shop strives for quality and new products. Among the items under the shop's subsidiary Invento Products are an electric pants presser valet and a sleeping machine. Factors that led Tampone to dismiss the idea of establishing branches include the lack of market in cities that can support the shop and his belief on the possible impact of poor management on the image of the store.

The article presents information on various developments related to finance. When the prolonged decline on the New York Stock Exchange occurred last year, and again when prices were swept down in the ten weeks' break which began last July and was hardly checked until the last days of September, it was commonly taken for granted that the investment market's action foreshadowed bad times in trade. The country's cotton crop had fallen disastrously short of trade requirements. Stock market values had been breaking almost uninterruptedly for the nine preceding months, and the price or steel common had got down nearly to 8 cents on the dollar.

Presents information on the New York Stock Exchange. Reference to an article related to the machinery of the Exchange; Comment on the stock exchange brokers and their working; Urge that the governors should at least be composed chiefly of commission brokers and that the system of electing only one-fourth of the directors every year should be abandoned; Declaration by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission that the brokers have only fourteen out of forty-two directors, while the floor traders, specialists and odd-lot traders have twenty-six; Discussion of a Stock Exchange trial of a member on the complaint of a customer; Information on the two tribunals, the Business Conduct Committee and the Arbitration Committee.

This article presents information about the New York exchange rates in the neutral markets. Exchange on Holland and the Scandinavian markets moved as much as 12 to 18 per cent, against New York as long ago as the early months of 1916. The rate on Amsterdam, Netherlands in January of last year, was much more unfavorable than it has been in the recent movement. Only on one or two days last week did the rate on Stockholm, Sweden reach figures so adverse as those of May, 1916. The point of this comparison is its testimony to the fact that something else than our entry into the war must have been at work on these neutral European exchanges. Not only so, but it is also true that, when these adverse rates of a year or more again prevailed, the U.S. was everywhere recognized as at high tide of neutral economic strength.