OPINIONS OF MARKET WRECKING. 71 



continue to exist or nut? If tliey were nil to be olcaned out (a la Pardridgo) the people 



would not only be no worse oH'. but aetunlly vastly better." 



The St. Louis Republic of August 20lh, 1891, says editorially: 



''When 11,000,000 bushels of wheat are sold in one day on one Merchants' E.^cchange, 



how long will it take to handle the whole crop? And that licins first found, how long 



will it take to handle a poker deck so as to regulate the wheat supply and estnhlhhiU pricet 



Aside from the disastrous effects of these gambling practices upon the producer, 

 who is an innocent and involuntary victim, they arc equally disastrous to the gambler 

 whom they rob of all right feeling. 



Speaking of gambling in all its forms, an eminent Knglish authority says: 



"Gambling not only lends to financial luin, but itproduces Ihe most heartless forms 

 of selfishness, and is especially fatal to delicacy and magnanimity of character. It is a 

 peculiarly mean and sordid vice." 



Herbert Spencer, iu his Study of Sociology, presents two aspects of the immorality 

 of gambling when he says: 



"It is gain without merit; and secondly, it is gain through another's loss. When- 

 ever the seller and the buyer are not mutually benelitted the transaction is immoral and 

 rotten and involves dishonesty and deceit on one side or the other." 



Some of the moral aspects of gambling m farm products, and the incalculable 

 wrong it works the producer, is well set forth in a recent issue of the (Iowa) Homestead. 

 Says the Homestead: 



"For owners of wheat to sell when at any given period they think the market price 

 is as good as it is going to be is one thing; for men who own no wheat, and mean to own 

 none, to sell for future delivery, is another and very diflereut thing. It is neither more 

 nor less, in substance, than a bet as to what the price will be at the date when, nominally, 

 the delivery is to be made. It is 'backing the judgment' just as much as though a stake 

 were set on the turn of a card. « * » * This backing of judgment, however, 

 is the simplest and least harmful form of grain gambling. The transactions of profes- 

 sional grain gamblers compare with this form about as a sold race, a brace game of faro 

 or Sir William Gordon-Cummings' dealings in baccarat compare with square games, 

 where risks are honestly taken and chance or legitimate skill is permitted to determine 

 them. The professionals, when a deal is decided upon, jump upon the market and sell 

 millions of bushels when they don't own a kernel; they follow the price down with 

 lower and still lower sales, using all kinds of false rumors — as to crops, failures of bankers, 

 and other conditions affecting products and mone.y — as clubs to beat down prices, and at 

 length, when prices have reached the lowest possible notch, they turn iu and 'cover 

 their shorts' at the low figure, reaping as stakes the difference between the higher figures 

 at which they have sold and the lower ones at which they have covered their 'short' 

 sales. The means employed to produce the depression, in point of honesty, is not a whit 

 superior to the cheating tricks of the professional card sharp. 



"But this falls far short of a full statement of the moral evil involved in grain 

 gambling. When a hundred excited men jumpintoa Chicago grain pit and play a game, 

 the result of which, when telegraphed over the country, reduces the value of the contents of 

 ever 1/ producer's bin five to ten cents a bushel, the tendency of it all is to confuse the ideas 

 of right and wrong of every man upon whom loss has thus been inflicted. 



"As an abstract proposition, every man will admit that demand and supply should 

 regulate price; yet the producers of the country have become so habituated to seeing the 

 law of demand and supply nullified to their injury by gambling manipulations that a 

 very large proportion of them would not hesitate to combine in the creation of an artifi- 

 cial scarcity if they saw their way clear to the accomplishment of such a result. If there 

 had never have been any cotton gambling there would never have been a sub-treasury 

 scheme, if there were no grain gambling there would have been no attempt at a 'farmers' 

 wheat corner.' 



"Gambling in farm products has caused such wide-spread injury to persons not in 

 any manner engaged in it, that it is in large measure responsible for some confusion of 

 ideas as to the proposition to fight the devil with fire. 



"The entire civilized world has lately been convulsed over the spectacle of a royal 

 came of baccarat at which there was said to have been some cheating, yet the evil of it 

 was confined to the persons engaged in the game. Possibly there are states in the Union 

 which do not make gambling a punishable offense; yet here again, the evil extends no 

 farther than to those who participate it it, or at most to their families. A number of 

 states have quite recently passed laws against pool selling; a species of gambling that ia 

 had enough to merit )irohibitiou, and yet infinitesimnlly trifling when compared with 

 the millions that an^ lost and won in grain (and cotton) gambling. Why should the law 

 punish those who play faro and wink at 'futures?' Why forbid poker and permit 'jiuts 

 and calls?' The former injures in purse and in morals perhaps, only the persons engaged 



