THIRTY CENT BREAD 73 



were still unlaid, found that they would have to pay 

 32 cents for the eggs, which they were forced to de- 

 liver at 25 J4 and 26>^ cents. 



The big gambler held them to their contracts. To 

 look upon those contracts as scraps of paper would 

 mean that they would lose their standing in the ex- 

 change. It would also mean the destruction of their 

 credit. They had to pay to the big "gambler an aver- 

 age gambling dfebt of 6 cents a dozen, or $1.80 a 

 case, on 50,000 cases, or $90,000, as their penalty 

 for speculating in eggs which had no existence and 

 which neither the fifty little gamblers nor the one 

 big gambler were ever destined to see. 



Each of the fifty little gamblers must recoup his 

 losses, every cent of which will sooner or later be 

 charged up to the public. 



This episode, which occasioned a tremendous fu- 

 rore in the New York Mercantile Exchange and the 

 New York Butter and Egg E?;change, is charac- 

 teristic of one of the food abuses over which no state 

 in the Union attempts to exercise any control. 



We now know that because heavy fowl sold in 

 tremendous quantities in 1916 at prices as high as 

 26 cents a pound wholesale, and because grain is 

 high that the outlook, due to a combination of natu- 

 ral shortage in production, a natural increase in the 

 cost of production, the manipulation of the market 

 by gamblers, and the inevitable demands of Europe 

 for a heavy export, promises, with eggs going i^to 

 storage at 31 cents, instead of 19, 20, or 21 cents, 

 as in other years, they will begin to come out of stor- 

 age in October at from 45 to 50 cents a dozen whole- 

 sale. 



At these wholesale prices the warehouses will turn 



