What is the genesis of the Dow Jones Industrial Average?
In 1882, two reporters, Messrs. Dow and Jones, left their employer, the Kiernan News Agency in New York City, to form Dow Jones & Company. Their first office was on Wall Street, adjacent to the stock exchange. With the assistance of Charles Bergstresser, another former employee of Kiernan who later became a Dow Jones partner, news was gathered, handwritten and rushed by messenger boys throughout the financial district. Mr. Charles Dow was the partner who devised stock averages to allow investors to discern price movement in the market as a whole and to compare individual stocks’ performance to a broader measure. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, comprised of 12 ‘smokestack’ companies, made its debut May 26, 1896. [Twelve years earlier, Mr. Dow’s initial stock average, containing 11 stocks (nine of which were railroad issues) had appeared in Customer’s Afternoon Letter, a daily two-page financial news bulletin that was the precursor of The Wall Street Journal.] Although Charles Dow was
