THE Market wrecker— a menace. 33 



Such conditions could not ol)tain were men dealing in products instead of lictions, 

 as an iininense capital would bo involved instead of insignificant margins uud callow 

 youlbs could not sell millions on a capital of a few hundred dollars. „ 



Such llnctuations inevitaljly destroy legitimate grain bu.>ing for the jjui^ose of 

 holding for profit, whereas a few years since nii-n could be found at every village in the 

 producing districts who stored grain for an advance. Now, however, the buyer is so 

 thoroughly impressed with the danger arising from these fluctuations that he hastens to 

 sell his grain as soon as bought, and when shipping takes the precaution to sell to arrive, 

 using the wire to effect .«aies, afraid to trust the market for a single day. 



So completely is the producer and distributor at the mercy oftho.se selling mere 

 figments that '-he packer daily buying a thonsand hogs, the products from which require 

 months to cure, is forced to seek protection against e.xcessive fluctuation by selling for 

 future delivery an amount of product equal to that from the hogs bought, and thusguard 

 against a possible loss resulting from fluctuations which the exercise of no amouut of 

 sound judgment will enable the business man to measure, as none can measure the vaga- 

 ries of a pit full of frantic speculators whose operations areas devoid of business delibera- 

 tion as of commercial morality. 



The following telegram but faintly describes a scene in the provision pit, a scene 

 well worthy the pencil of a Hogarth: 



"The provision pit on the Board of Trade, which has been almost deserted for sev- 

 eral weei(s, has been filled, since the opening of the Hoard this morning, with a Irantic 

 crowd of yelling betters. As soon as the Board opened it became ruuioied that there was 

 a "corner" in pork in contemplation, and a wild scramble of shorts to cover followed." 



There is not an article that has known the blighting touch of the market-wrecking 

 short seller that it is not hazardous for the legitimate dealer to handle, and grain is made 

 a veritable shuttle-cock of by a body of men the majority of whom are known by the 

 suggestive title of "scalpers" and whose entire capital is barely sufficient to buy a Board 

 of Trade men.bership, or "margin" a purchase or two of fiat grain, and yet the Chicago 

 Board of Trade, in its memorial to Congress opposing the passage of the Butterworth 

 bill, says: 



"The passage of this bill and its enforcement as a law would produce a commercial 

 convulsion amounting to a national calamity. It would be a vital attack upon the vi-iy 

 foundation principles of modern business methods and usages. Itwould lie hostile to I he 

 commercial genius and spirit of the age. It won! d destroy a vast system for the economical 

 handling of the agricultural products of the nation; asystem which is in entire harmony 

 with the progress of our civilization and whicli is a part of that civilization. It would 

 disastrously disturb tninsportation interests of every kind, and it would in many ways, 

 directly and indirectly, react injuriously upon the farnK-r, and that by the jjassage and 

 enforcement of the proposed law the farmer will be bereft of a market for his products." 



Sucli assertions leave the onus of proof with the proponents, but a thorough ex- 

 amination of the memorial fails to disclose a single fact in support of such statements, 

 while it admits the pernicious character of option dealing and favors itssuppression when 

 carried on in bucket shops, where methods identical with those obtaining upon the Boards 

 of Trade are in vogue. Hence the layman naturally believes the bucket shop no worse 

 than the Board of Trade, and the Board of Trade enmity to the bucket shop to be the 

 outgrowth of rivalry iu business. The bucket shop being the logic;d corollary of option 

 dealing. When option sales cease on Boards of Trade the bucket shop will cease to exist. 

 Aside from its postulates the memorial is compounded in about equal parts of so 

 phiBticatious, pretended solicitude for the farmer and special pleadings for the continu- 

 ance of a system which the judgment of the people condemn and the abolition of which 

 would not cause even a ripple upon the stream of trade much less commercial convulsion. 

 When we reflect that only cotton, grain, hog products. cofTee and petroleum are the 

 subject of option sales, while thousands of other commodities are readily bought and sold 

 without the factitious aid of the market wrecking option dealer and have thus far escaped 

 the blighting eflfectsof board of trade methods and that the natural relation of supply and 

 demand determines the price for nearly all such articles, one cannot but hope that Con- 

 gress will, by the enactment of an effective measure, relegate the staples subject to board 

 of trade manipulation to such commercial methods as suDBce for all other commodities. 



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