The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 11, 1915, Page 9

B SUCKERS AND THE SHELL GAME. THESE are hilarious days for the fishermen of Wall street. Bait is plentiful and the biting is fine. Indeed not since before the days of “Frenzied .Fi- nance”. and the New York Insurance investigation, has the fish- ing been so excitingly good. The old saw that a sucker is born every minute belongs to the limbo of the past. Most of them were twins. And O! how hungry they are! Fifteen years ago these gullible fish swam the speculative waters of Gotham in schools. The fishermen played their shell game early and late—and did a rushihg business. Then came the revelations of Frenzied Finance and the suck- ars took to the small streams and limpid pools. They stayed in the shallow waters for many moons. Meanwhile the brokers, the chorus chickens, the innkeepers and the Great White Way had to struggle along the best they could. _ Much tempting bait was cast in but the suckers were con- tent to root for honest grub and leave the brokets, the innkeep- ers and the chickens to their wailing and sack cloth and ashes. Meanwhile the suckers fattened and not a few grew lazy and longed for ease. And while the gloom was at its Harkest and the clouds at their lowest, like a Pompeian avalanche, came the war. This appeared to be the final and finish blow. It looked as though the Wall Street gambler was down for the count. But he wasn’t. : He got a hunch and scrambled to his feet. The war was the biggest gamble since Noah was local weatherman. \ War stocks were christened, “War Babies” and “War Brides.” It was succulent, juicy, luscious bait. How it made the mouths of the suckers water, Their lips slavered. And with a WHEN I SELL, T SEND WHEAT UP TO THE YOP~ NOTCH PRICE THE NONPARTISAN LEADER PAGE NINB rushing tide they swarmed .under the bright and blinding lights. And not since the game was devised has there been such a slaughter of the innocent. Never before has such fortunes on paper been made. Never before has the Great White Way known such hilarious joy. War stocks that sold at $30 before war started now sell for $600 and $700 a share. Brokers’ commissiorls amount to more than a half million dollars a day. And the suckers are rushing like mad. They swallow the hook, line, bobber, pole and all. It is well that a new one is born every minute, and still better if often they are twins. They will be needed to supply the Wall Street gamblers. War stocks have reached dizzy heights and still continue to climb. But the bottom will drop out some bright day—Dbright for the gamblers, but dark for the suckers. Then the suckers will return to safer waters of honest ef- forts. They will swear “never again.” They will lay the blame on-Wall Street. But they deserve little sympathy. They know it’s a' game—the other fellow’s game. They know there is no chance to beat the other fellow’s game. Probably the game will exist as long as there are suckers to catch, and there will be suckers to catch as long as the game exists. If politics are so rotten, so dirty and so low that the farmer should not mix into it, why do the eminently respectable, highly cultured, leading citizens, prominent businessmen and social lead- ers enjoy it so well? X When they tell us that the crop will be a billion dollar one. do they mean that the farmer will get that billion dollars or will it be divided between the farmer, the railroads, the elevators, the terminals, the speculators, brokers, and the millers? WHEN THE FARMER SELLS I KNOCK IT DOWN TO THE LOWEST PRICE. A Little Story of Bulls and Bears TO us ordinary human beings out here in the big, wide West |time. So, all being in the game, they fix it so they can take there is an air of mystery about the workings of the wheat market. We read of “bulls” and “bears”, “shorts”, “covering” and other base-ball-like terminology and think of the whole thing as some mysterious other-world that is infinitely beyond our range of conception. ; ‘We do not realize that the men who make the big money on wheat never own a grain, probably; that men sell millions of bushels of wheat a day and never deliver a peck; that other men buy millions of bushels and never receive a peck. They never expect to ; They don’t deal.in wheat. They simply bet on the price. One fellow bets that wheat will be so and so at such a time. .- 'The other fellow will bet that it will not. 'Whichever one guesses right wins. . Bulls- and bears are simply the two classes of speculators— " the bulls being those who bet on a high price and the bears ~ those who bet on a low price. So the bull wants the price to go up and the bear wants it to go dowm ’ ; All wheat gamblers on the exchange . are: either bulls or . These, as a whole, constitute the grain combine. N turns. That’s the reason the price goes up a ‘day and then down a day, or some times up and down two or three times in one day. - In other words the combine “bulls” or “bears” the market to suit itself. The whole thing is a perfectly constructed ma- chine, and is operated at the pleasure of the gang. It works just as simply as you see it illustrated in the car- toon above. If a telegram comes in that hail has hit the North- west, that indicates that there may be a few bushels short— though actually there is nothing of the kind—yet the bulls seize upon that as an excuse to boost the price. If by 1 o’clock a report comes in that good rains have fallen in Oklahoma and Kansas, that serves excuse for the bears to hammer the price down, for the prospects are that there will be an “over pro- duction.” : And thus does the combine on one pretext and another, pull “high” or “low”, as suits its whim, and makes millions; while . the innocent “lamb”, -being that part of the public which dares to speculate but has no control of the machine, along with the farmer get swindled out of their honest earnings. The six million farmers in the United States could smash : ‘ ‘|that machine into flinders if they would get right solidly to- - Now it would be very ruinous for one side to win all the : ] . : gether and stick there. . .