246 
COTTON 
uct, unless there is a spinner to use it ; hence, both 
are factors in this trade and both are entitled to 
information as complete as statistics are able to 
give — first to the producer, that he may know what 
supply and demand may do to help him with his 
sale: second, to the spinner that he also may know 
these facts and so protect himself in his purchasing 
Then, too, publicity will assist the otherwise 
ignorant players with the ticker that they may keep 
away from ruin, and by having reliable information 
thrust before their very eyes, not fly into the face 
of things as they are. 
Over-trading: — Over-trading in the cotton mar- 
ket, as is the case with exaggeration of any other 
kind, means that the trade inevitably gets on 
false ground. It provides the opportunity for the 
"knowing ones," the strong, the mighty, not only 
to wrest cotton investments from the weak and 
immature, but it puts into the hands of the mighty, 
the power necessary to rob the weak of all their 
possessions, and to bring ruin to them and their 
dependents. 
When this abuse is checked, the day of such ex- 
treme fluctuations as we have known heretofore 
will have passed and much of the evil of trading 
in contracts will have ended. 
Monthly Deliveries: — Here is one of the unrea- 
sonable features of the Cotton Exchange machinery. 
Only the law of supply and demand has a right to 
determine real value to him who wants a com- 
modity. Yet at three o'clock on the last day of 
any month as the contract now operates, cotton 
may sell one, two, and even three and four cents 
higher than a minute after that time of the same 
day, or at ten o'clock the day following. 
This is nothing but a trick, a fictitious condition 
