Salt Lake Tribune | 1909-05-30 | Page 1 | Patten is "King" and Yet Merciful

PATTEN IS "Ki" I ADO TjTJEin I Could Have Forced Price of Wheat to $5 Per Bushel Sat- urday, Is Report. I HAS FORTUNE TO SHOW f FOR HIS MANY DEALS I Only Bit of Sentiment in Hay's Business Is Bonus to All i His Clerks. CHICAGO, May 29. What is general- I ly conceded tu have been the most successful suc-cessful wheat deal in the annals of the Chicago board of trade closed today, to-day, and it closed without squeezing ot ! shorts, which in other days' wns wont 1 to furnish a show to the gallery vis- fi itors aud leave La Salle street stagger- in , 5 .fames A. Patten during today's brief session made a fixed price of $.LIU a bushel. Through his pit clerk, "I5d" . "Walker, he bought or sold at that price, ; but the buying was almost purely thoor- i otieal on liis part. Jle did take iu few thousand bushels from some "trail- ft cr" who wailed until the last moment : for his profits, but in the main ho dis- posed ot about a half million to shorts, J who had hoped against hope to the last, moment, and then, in the parlance of j the pit. "took their medicine." No Excitement Apparent. It. was .all quite tranquil, really duller i than usual, and not oven romotely re- I sembling the turbulence of tho sessions j of previous months. Few wore in the J pit and Mr. Patten was not ono of them. j He sat in his office facing the black- j board, chewing vigorously at a quid of j gum, his hat pushed back on his head 8 and his eyes fixed on the quotations of l! options other than May. It wns uot until an hour after (he 1' close of tho market that tho only bit of sentiment connected with the whole thing leaked out. A procession of clerks headed for the casliier;s office with broad grins on their faces and. slips of white paper in their hands called attention at-tention to it, and it was learned that every employe of the Bartlett-Pntten house had been given a bonus of 10 per cent, of his annual salary. Price Not Inflated. The price at which May wheat closed -today did not represent a fictitious value. It "was, accordiug to traders, consistent -with tho price the world ! over. Mr. Patten, had he wished, might JL' have put the price at 5 and remain- j! iug sh.qrts -would have been compelled jj to pay it or acknowledge bankruptcy. However, according' to his friends, he remained consistent with his assertion that, he had no wish to manipulate J prices, but. only to secure the legitimate j profits of his foresight. He backed his judgment that thcro was less wheat iu the world than was generally believed and found himself in control. Wall it street sold short, as aid some iullucn- I tial western speculators, but Mr. Patten Pat-ten stood firm. Ho look a vacation at I a critical period of the campaign and ' ignored a decline of 12 cents that followed fol-lowed his departure from Chicago. That ' loss was more than recovered, for it was only a few days ago that 'the cereal sold at $1,3511, the highest price in I eleven years. : Mr. Patten has made a fortune, how H much he cannot say until his cash wheat is marketed, His own admission. ( howover, seems to make 1,000,000 a ;; conservative estimate. It may run much larger. The losses, it is said, have fallen mostly on professional speculators. specula-tors. The battle is not ovor vol. for the bulls and bears arc still divided as to fj whethor cmptj bins will be replenished 11 by the July harvest.