Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1864-04-16
Gold and Stock speoulatiOns.
How Contraband News is sent from washington

Cincinnati GazetteI
Nobody who has ever spent a week in
Washington, is unacquainted with the whole
theory and practice of gold and stock specu-
lation but readers in other quarters may en-
JOY more happy ignorance, and may accord
ingly have been somewhat mystifyed yester-
day by the demonstrations preceding and at
tending the passage of the Gold bill :
Whether in gold or stocks, everything in
Wall street depends upon having the earliest
news; and consequently there is not Heading
stock-dealing firm in New York that does not
have from one to half dozen Correspondents
in Washington, charged to spare no pains or
expense in furnishing them by telegraph, and
generally in cipher, the earliest intelligence
OF any success or disaster in the field, any inn
portant action of the Treasury Department,
any rumor offoreign compications-in short,
anything likely to affect the hopes-or fears of
the community, which find their barometer,
in the wayering of the gold market.
These correspondents are generally men
supposed to have the confidence of high Off
cials, or access to early dispatches and, for
obvious reasons, their engagements kept as
secret as possible. Last summer, one New
York banking house, in boastful moment,
claimed that it could always have news within
an hour after the President had it !; and
another was said to have numbered among its
correspondents. the chief of staff of a great
army in the field. i = ~ sa{
OF course the services of such men are not
enlisted without a" consideration" proper
tionate at once to the risks they run in fur
nishing the desired news, and to the nature
and accuracy of the news itself In general,
this consideration" depends on what is
made out of the information. Some are
promised fixed share of the profits; others
are simply 81 let in, as the phrase goes, for
fifty or a hundred thousand dollars, in any
extensive operation based on the news they
furnish. y - = - - Al /
Thus-news comes of great disaster. 1t
will shock public confidence, and send gold
up two, three, five, even ten per cent. One
of these correspondents of a great New York
stock-operating house gets it a few hours be-
fore it becomes public. He instantly pre-
pares some previously agreed upon dispatch
=" Mary is very much worse, and the doctor
gives the case up i" or John is very i'll and
will not be able to travel for some days yet
and telegraphs this innocent looking mes
sage not to the firm in New York, for that
would arouse suspicion, if there were CEN
sor at the telegraph office, but to the private
address of some one of its members, or to the
confidential clerk, or even, in some cases, to
the wife of some one of the house. They be-
gin buying gold at once, cautiously and
through as many third parties as possible, to
avoid creating a panic and, among their
other purchases, make one of fifty or a hun
dred thousand for the man who has furnished
Next day, or perhaps within few hours,
the news gets out, and gold goes up, say five
per cent. If the correspondent has been ''let
in for a hundred thousand, he pockets five
thousand dollars as his share of the operation.
Occasionally one of these correspondents
makes such lucky strike--much more often
he furnishes news for weeks and months with
out its having such an effect on the market as
to bring him the merest dribblets of profits.
But the chance of something " brilliant" has
its facinations, and the stock-operators have
no difficulty in inducing well-informed people
to furnish them all the news they get.
These men haunt every lobby and commit
tee room. A conference committee reaches
a conclusion on some important question, af
fecting gold, or stocks, or whiskey, or any
other article of speculation. They imagine
it a profound secret; and are startled a day
or two afterward, to find that some operator
in New York had it within few hours after
its adoption, and that a fortune has been made
out of the intelligence. The Supreme Court
makes decision-before it is announced, a
"ring" in New York has operated on its eff
feet, and made enough to, set every one con-
nected with it up in the world. A bureau of
the government resolves to recommend tax
on particular article-before the recon-
mendation reaches Congress, certain parties
in New York have bought up all of the art
icle they can possibly get and when the rise
comes they pocket the proceeds. s.
1t seems utterly impossible to prevent this.
When news of important battles is coming in
the government has sometimes attempted it,
but the attempt was as Idle as it was foolish.
A censor has been established at the tele-
graph office, and he has wisely suppressed ev-
erything saying word about the war; But
a servant girl comes in with a hurried scrawl
on torn sheet of delicatel scented French
paper, in lady's hand: a
"Geo. IL. Montgomery, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New
York. Do come home at once, Mary cannot live
twenty-four hours longer. Laura Montgomery
How can he stop that? But s'Geo. III.
Montgomery is a myth and Mary's illness
means Rockers defeat, and the hotel clerk
has been instructed to send any such dispatch
by the speediest means to.somebody's Bank
down town; and the firm makes the money,
and the Government censor keeps blinking
like an owl over the dispatches, and rigidly
stopping everything relating TO the war;"
and Mr.. Staunton felicitates himself over hav-
tHOSC pests StIu buCH
accounts by mail rather than by telegraph
"How little sense it takes to run Govern
ment," said some wise man.
Once, during last summer, a leading news
paper editor got disguised, ard determined
that the gold gamblers should not monopo-
lie all the early news. SO he went into the
cipher business too, but being rather raw at
it, his first effort was not quite so good as
some subsequent ones. He forwarded the CT
pher to his leading Washington correspondent
Pretty soon the operators in his city, who
knew him solely as devoted newspaper man,
were astonished at receiving for him this dis
patch from Washington:
ssHave sold your fifteen thousand bushels of corn
at S5. The market looks squally.''
His paper announced, the next morning,
that the main body of Lees army had crossed
the Maryland line, and was moving into Penn
sylvania; and his chief rival got very mad
and complained to the War Department that
he was bribing the telegraph company but
it was whispered about among his friends that
so and SO was neglecting his business and go
ing into very rash speculations, and - he
changed his cipher! rs1rsssf ~
But am wandering from the speculations
oyer the Gold bill, which set out to de-
scribe. The happy people who know nothing
about the gold market may not know that
money may be made on fall in gold or
stocks as well as on rise. Suppose you
know that something, not now public, is GO
ing to transpire in day or two that will put
gold down. You "sell short;" that is to saw
rox. n aoptraat with man who wanfz