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. 
