244 COTTON 



them. True conditions, correct reports, are dis- 

 torted; falsehoods and all sorts of misrepresenta- 

 tion are indulged in, with no other object than to 

 make profit by subverting the legitimate play of 

 supply and demand. Daily fluctuations in prices 

 are due to these speculative influences designed to 

 depress or advance. While the wise speculator 

 endeavors to anticipate and correctly interpret the 

 movement of the fundamental law, it is true that 

 other ignorant ones endeavor to work in oppo- 

 sition to it; so these influences, playing at counter 

 to each other, keep the ticker ever busy, recording 

 the hourly fluctuations from season to season. 



ENTER THE IGNORANT SPECULATOR 



This indicates that there are two kinds of spec- 

 ulations: one that consistently aims to buy and 

 sell in the face of the correct play of the law of 

 supply and demand; the second that throws this 

 law to the wind, knowingly or through ignorance, 

 and accepts the situation as a "gamble," a blind 

 chance, as uncertain as the fling of a penny. It 

 is the actor in this second instance who sows, 

 knowing not what he will reap, and who introduces 

 the most potent evil in the Cotton Exchange. 



In almost every town and city of the country 

 futures are now bought and sold. Speculative 

 greed getting something for nothing draws the 

 clerk, the journalist, the mechanic, the business 

 man, the farmer all trades and professions, and 

 tempts all to try the blind chance. And this 

 gambler finds the chance, sells without reason, 

 buys knowing not what, nor with any understand- 

 ings as to the workings and machinery of the 

 transaction in which he engages. 



