And why do you think reducing frequency of all trades to 1 second would eliminate HFT ? the term high frequency would simply mean 1 second. But what it would do is drastically reduce liquidity in the market place, which would hurt small investors and not the HFT.
yes because spreads were wider and stock trading was routed to specialists on NYSE who could "jump the queue" and peek ahead at who they wanted or did not want to trade with. Also stock commissions were a lot higher in those days. Also, it was unfair because to have "fast access" required presence on the exchange floor which is much harder than putting a computer in the colocation facility
