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Show ion IN WAT HAS BEEN BROKEN Break in Market Follows Desertion of Leader, and Many Fortunes Have Been Wiped Out. Mad Scene in Grain Pit When Dik' covery is Made of Patten's Unexpected Unex-pected Vacation. Red Letter Day in History of Chicago Board of Trade. Chicago James A. Patten, Ihe wheat king, has apparently abandoned the fight, and has sought the seclusion seclu-sion of a ranch in Colorado, twenty.-Ave twenty.-Ave miles from a railroad, declining to be interviewed cm the probable outcome of the remarkable corner of May and July Wheat simply declaring that "It is vaction time; I have plenty of money, have earned a rest, and now I am going to take it." When seen at Trinidad, Colo., on Thursday, prior to his departure for the ranch of W. H. Bartlett, his part ner, Patten said: "There is a short age of wheat and that accounts foi the high price. I have not manipulated manipu-lated the market; simply bought wheat and contracts to deliver wheat, just like steel makers buy raw iron. Why not? 1 bought wheat; yes, all 1 could get, and when It was cheap. We sold when the price went up. That's But Patten's disappearance from i Chicago has been taken by many to mean that he realizes that he has met defeat. Thirty million bushels of wheat, at a low estimate, were dumped into the pit on the Chicago board of trade within the space of a few short hours Thursday. From the tap of the opening gong until the bell clanged the closing of the most sensational day's trading ever experienced on the board, the bears were in full control of the market. mar-ket. The price of wheat, carried along In a maelstrom, broke with almost Incredible In-credible rapidity. Fortunes were swept away in minutes. The pit was a howling, fighting mass of men who looked and acted as if they suddenly had been bereft of all reason. Sell! Sell! Sell! This was the order or-der of the day. And for every seller amongst that mob of screaming, tearing, tear-ing, pushing, money-mad men, there was a buyer. Thursday, April 22, 1909, will go down in the history of the Chicago board of trade as a red letter day. Wheat fof the May delivery broke from $1.24 at the opening of the day's trading to $1.20 at the close. Wheat for the July delivery broke from $1.13 at the opening to $1.09. Wheat for the September delivery broke from $1.05 at the opening to $1.01. The losses that were sustained during dur-ing these hours of wildly excited trading are known only to the men who were on the wrong side of the wheat market. But they amounted to millions of dollars. It seemed as though the psychological moment had come for action for ,a break in the prices of wheat. The manipulations of the "king of the wheat pit," James A. Patten, had put the prices of May and July wheat to a higher level than they had been In many years. At the close of the nerve-racking day, George W. Patten, the office manager man-ager of the firm, and in the absence of his brother, "Jim,'' the field general gen-eral in command, figured up the slips that were handed to him by a weary, bruised corps of traders and calmly announced that his firm had bought more wheat than It had sold during the turmoil. This statement is not believed by many, the charge being made that Patten has taken his profits. Others declared the wheat king is hopelessly ruined. |
