| Show anro WITH WHEAT 7 in the fill fallness ness of the re rejoicing over harvests at home and with ahe H I 1 news of a short crop among our let of rivals so that prices have large we are confronted with antics from the great grain grow aft states of the northwest showing albl esst tte wheat yield will be less by maw bushels than was the whole credited to that section the and minnesota are charge jt with the falling failing off or most of it bif ad if there were any probability that taw tb of decline would be maln main itt toed throughout it would be a very matter indeed so serious that abam w would 0 uld be but little more than is heeded for home consumption so far agib seasons crop is concerned 0 is IB how however ever much reason to d bew B that such will not be the case be first place as the matter is 1 10 IO we vs d at this distance the quote quota of act assigned to the states named av been overdrawn this being ta tte placing of them on an equal footing in that respect with the other states of that section because of the assured increase generally it is pretty well understood that not only the dakotas and Minnesota but nebraska kansas and iowa as well while heavy wheat producers are not equal as such to most if not all of their more easterly neighbors corn being the cereal which more than any other nourishes flourishes in the former places named it is the middle and more easterly of the northwestern states that give the greatest wheat returns as a rule and if they have gone ahead of their average as seems the case while the others have but come up to it the result by comparison would at first glance seem to be a shortage where in fact the real situation is neither that nor increase independent of all this is the very obvious fact that a good deal of the upward movement in wheat is not attributable to the action of the great law of supply and demand except as an incident undoubtedly bounteous harvests in the united states and a great falling off in argentina for instance would have a tendency to advance prices somewhat here but there would not be any such spasmodic movements ts up and down as speculators delight in were not their magic touch added to the situation the gentry who toil not neither do they spin but live for the sole purpose of having more wealth by clever manipulation have it within their power to supplement and even to some extent control the natural law chicago is the grain center of the country and from that point the traffic radiates but it Is not necessary for an operator to be right on the ground in order to participate in the spoils with a brokerage connected directly with headquarters by telegraph and synchronized timepieces time pieces on hand as good results can be 0 obtained in salt lake city as in the illinois metropolis one class gathers in all the available stocks on the marke tand by withholding it a sh short ort time the inevitable tendency is for the article so withheld to advance somewhat in price the advance not being attributable to any real present shortage cannot last long and as soon as it has gone about as far up the scale as it is likely to go the holders who in this case are bulls let go and the influx thereby created produces the reverse movement or a decline those who operate the other way the bears then jump on the article whatever it is and crowd it down as far as possible when they load up and are in turn ready for business the art of the thing consists in knowing at lust just what times to take hold and let go and a few seconds sometimes make a vast deal of difference this is a form of gambling which has received a sort of legitimacy from custom and the participation therein of respectable business people it is not however greatly different from any other form exe except ept in its methods the theory and results axe are the same in every case it is simply an effort to increase the operators possession by bidding against chance and making the thing bartered or sold the merest figurehead in the proceeding of course skill ability cunning and coolness of judgment and steadiness of nerve are prime requisites and not a little of the measure of success attained is attributed to good luck it is thus easily seen that when we read of wheat going to and falling back to at the close it does not mean that the higher figure was caused by the disc discovery 0 very that there w was as less wheat in the count country zy and more demand than was shown to be the case when the lower figure was substituted by any means that would be strictly a legitimate barometrical indication of the state of the market it means in this case that the bulls and bears are having their regular pastime |
