ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 25 



buying raid on the board of trade they create an artificial 

 demand that sends prices up; but when they change into 

 " bears" and sell, it creates an artificial supply and prices 

 decline. They may not own a bushel of real wheat. 



By this artificial method the big speculator throws mil- 

 lions of imaginary bushels into the market in competition 

 with the growers' real wheat, creating an over-supply where 

 an over-demand would have occurred. His object is to 

 keep prices from advancing, or even to lower them, until he 

 loads up with more cheap wheat. Then when farm supplies 

 are gone, this same "bear" changes into a huge "bull." He 

 takes his cash wheat off the market and throws large buy- 

 ing orders on the board of trade. That creates an artificial 

 demand that no one cares to try to fill, since the growers 

 have sold out. Up and up goes the price now. He is mak- 

 ing thousands of dollars on his cash wheat and options for 

 every cent it advances. He puts out columns of bull news 

 about such great demand for wheat and no supplies, a con- 

 dition he and his fellow-conspirators created to boost prices. 

 He even predicts in the papers that some mysterious inter- 

 est has cornered wheat and will double its price. Everybody 

 gets the "bull" fever. Those who have wheat hold it for 

 the expected top price. Millers and bakers and other deal- 

 ers in wheat and its products now get panic-stricken to se- 

 cure supplies before wheat gets too scarce. 



Thus supply and demand is a made-to-order condition by 

 the big manipulators. When they get the price up to where 

 they want it, they quietly unload their huge stocks of wheat 

 at a price twenty-five to one hundred per cent more than 

 they paid the wheat growers. Flour and other wheat prod- 

 ucts advance to correspond with this top price of wheat, 

 and the wheat grower buys back what he needs on that 

 basis. City union labor demands higher wages on account of 

 dear bread. The wages are granted and added to the price 

 of every article the wheat grower buys. The general public 



