The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-06-22

II moralzing would cure the speculative
fever which so often besets the community
cure would have been effected long ago. But
such moralizing seems to have about as much
result as does preaching. Speculation and
SHINING 60 on all the same. Just as the
moral world affords thousand themes aud
ten thousand bad examples for the subject and
Illustration of the preachers remarks, the
financial world now and then gives striking
reason for avoiding the evil of speculation.
Yesterday Wall street was the scene
of one of those periodical panics which
come like a thunder-clap out of q
clear sky or like an earthquake in
San Francisco. The jewellers in the frail
tenements of the latter city are not more sub
ject to having the timbers come tumbling
about their ears than are the spectators in
Wall street to have the fancy values of stocks
engulf them in disaster and ruin. Yet the
latest panic, like the latest earthquake, is soon
forgotten, and the sufferers are the only ones
who hold it ia remembrance. The most recent
collapse is luckily confined to single stock of
respectable, dividend-paying railway stock,
by the way, which, on the generally accepted
theory of Wall street, ought to be
'sure thing" aud devoid of risk.
But good thing may be overdone.
In the present case large and wealthy pool
started a speculation in the shares of the
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad,
and, acting on the belief that an advance in
It's value beyond the ordinary average market
price would be sure to enlist sufficient specu-
lation for fall, they boldly bought and put
away vast quantities of the stock, hoping to
produce what is technically known as
''corner," the successful issue of which would
enable them to dictate the price at which they
would sell. But they happened to make the
mistake Of reckoning without their host. The
''bears" were SO impressed with the folly Of
selling for decline at a period of the year
when the ease of the money market is usually
inmical to such speculation that they re-
fused to fall into the trap 80 ingeniously set
for them, and the pool, after buying up
everybody's stock and letting in the outsiders
for generous profits, found themselves embar-
raised for the means to take care of their
enormous burden. Nobody wanted the stock
at the advanced and inflated price, and Wig
orous activity in the stock, created by their
own orders to buy and sell, failing still to
attract outside orders for its purchase, the
seeds of internal treason were sown, and some
of the pool shifted their load on the Others
The sequel is readily anticipated. The ability
to sustain being in inverse order to the i'm
posed weight the load toppled over, and Rock
Island tumbled from its dizzy 1909 to the more
stable level of 10. One feature of the pres
ent crash is the Limitation of the disaster to
the cliques and their tools. The game was all
theirs, and 80 are its losses. Seldom, indeed,
have the coniding public been so little in
volved in Wall street smash-up. Usually
they are the victims-the sheep shorn by the
spectators shears. But the professional
mble-riggers Of the stock market have, in
this instance, been caught in their own wies.
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