32 THE MARKET WRECKER— A MENACE. 



lower prices, being effectiiMlly aided by a constant fear, on the partof holders of contracts, 

 that prices will recede and entail loss. 



The bears act upon the knowledge that men can be terrorized into selling, and any 

 improbable tale of disaster will have an intlueuce; hence, when they raid the market the 

 Rir is thick with rumors of failures, panics and wide-spread comnmrcial disaster, conpUd 

 with the offering in a single day of more grain than there is in tlie country, the result 

 being that the bull becomes, in turn, nervous, timid and then panic stricken, and being 

 unable to respond to a call for increased margins, throws his grain overboard, adding 

 greatly to the swelling tide and helping to further depress the price. These immense 

 offerings result in di.sastrous effects upon prices and the prosperity of the producer, the 

 prices for whose products are fixed by these operations. 



"A." among thousands of others, having contracted to deliver what he does not 

 own and is unable to buy, except at a price greater than that at which he has agreed to 

 sell, resorts to all conceivable devices, falsehoods and misrepresentations to break the 

 market and so cheapen products, before the maturity of his contract, as to leave i differ- 

 ence in his favor, or that will enable him to buy a like amount of speculative grain at a 

 price lower than that named in his contract with "B." 



What with multitudes of bears, with contracts maturing and a contingent of bulla 

 anxious to "get in on breaks," an immense majority of speculators are ever working for 

 low prices and offering hundreds of millions of fiat products, and with each drop in price 

 having a profit, inulti))ly the offerings, such additional tenders further depressing pricesi 

 and thus without possessing a pound of the product offered these men are, by one round 

 in the grain-pits, able to depreciate in value the entire grain products of the couutr3', 

 such depreciation sometimes representing a large part of the year's earnings of millions 

 of farmers. 



How different is the course of the legitimate dealer owning or haviug the means of 

 producing the commodities offered for sale. All his efforts are directed towards securing 

 good prices, steadiness in demand and freedom from rapid and wide oscillations in values. 

 The seller who is an owner of property never depreciates it value, nor does he depress 

 prices by offerings of impossible quantities which it would be impractible to deliver. 



On the other hand, the market wrecker is such an exceptional product of civiliza- 

 tion, and short selling such a singular commercial method that dealer and method are 

 alike unique, being the only person and method ever engaged in systematically depreciat- 

 ing what the person proposes to sell, by such method; and such phases of option dealing 

 and Board of Trade methods are not inaptly characterized in the following paragraph 

 from the Chicago Herald: 



"The trouble with the Board of Trade seems to be that instead of being, as it ought 

 to be, a body of intelligent merchants devoted to the advancement of legitimate business 

 and an intelligent study of questions affecting the control of the products of the West 

 and their direction to the Chicago market, they seem to have reached the level of a body 

 of mere speculative "scalpers," living off the I'artiiiM', producing nothing and In no sense 

 contributing by their industry to the general good." 



Nothing could be more destructive of the interest alike of producer and legitimate 

 dealer than the practices now obtaining on the Boards of Trade where for each unit of 

 any actual product sold and delivered hundreds of thousands of fictitious units are offered 

 at prices sometimes one to fifteen per cent, below the price obtaining for actual product, 

 owing doubtless to the fact that the mill has not been invented which will convert fig- 

 ments into merchantable flour. Such practices result in abnormal and excessive fluctua- 

 tions in values — fluctuations so rapid as to bewilder those on the spot, as is shown by a 

 recent Chicago market report in the statement that: 



"The uncertainly witli which the market moved yesterday maybe illustrated by 

 an incident. One trader huving purchased 25,000 1 u.«hels December wheat at $1 02| 

 stepped out of the pit. ITe liad Ijoen out but a moment when he heard a great hubbub, 

 rushed in under the impression that the market was dropping on him, frantically inquired 

 the price, was told it was "seven-eights," sold his wheat at that price, and was cursing 

 his luck over a loss of "threej-eighths" when he heard the remark that it was a quick 

 "bulge" and learned it was II.O-IJ instead of ?l,01-a and that he had a profit of two and 

 five-eighths instead of a loss." 



