Unde] 

 product 



ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 55 



Under the present board of trade gambling in prices of farm 

 products it is more alluring to thousands of men than grow- 

 ing the crops. They hear of the successes but not the losses 

 made by the small dealers in options, and at once take the 

 get-rich-quick fever. 



Two cases widely advertised will illustrate the demoraliz- 

 ing effect of such gambling on young farmers. A farmer in 

 McPherson County, Kansas, sent his son to a school in 

 Hutchinson a few years ago and gave him $250, with the 

 admonition that he must make it last him through the school 

 year. His uncle in Hutchinson was dealing in wheat futures 

 on the Kansas City board of trade and persuaded the lad 

 to let him have $200 to invest in wheat margins for him. 

 At the close of the school the boy went home in his first 

 tailor-made suit, a new touring car, and with a bank deposit 

 book showing $7,000 to his credit. Of course, all were 

 astonished, and he was the hero with the girls and the envy 

 of the country boys. 



A Northern man, visiting in the South, fell in lov.e with a 

 Southern girl whose father was a cotton planter, and had 

 been a colonel in the Confederacy, and, of course, would not 

 allow his daughter to marry the Northerner. But the chap 

 found out that the Colonel's home was heavily mortgaged 

 and would be sold at auction in the fall if not paid. The 

 Colonel was relying on one of those bumper " mortgage- 

 lifting" cotton crops then in sight to turn the trick. The 

 young man having observed the unusual cotton prospect 

 sold it heavily on the New Orleans cotton exchange. Down 

 went the cotton price until the old man's bumper crop 

 would not pay expenses, to say nothing of lifting mortgages. 

 The young man collected his margins and attended the sher- 

 iff's sale of the Colonel's farm. As it was about to go under 

 the hammer to the highest bidder and the old man saw the 

 accumulation of his life's work and home slipping from his 

 grasp, the young man stepped up, called a halt, asked for 



