Daily Kennebec journal., 1879-11-10

New YORK, Oct. 81.
Presidential booms may wax and wane,
but the stock boom never dies. Men never
lose their desire to get money rapidly,
and just now they are struggling for it in
Wall street as they never did before.
The dealings in the street this week have
been greater than any heretofore recorded
and still the boom is upward. Some
brokers have more business offered than
they can attend to- A seat in the Stock
Exchange now commands $4,000, which
is twice the highest price of six months
ago. Next week the new Open Board of
Brokers will begin work in the old Post
Office building at Nassau and Liberty
streets. The members of the new board
will handle smaller lots than the old Ex-
change men. and this will let in an army
of small operators, clerks, book-keepers,
small merchants and so on, and greatly
widen the area of decentralization. Already
the stock mania has become alarming.
All sorts of worthless securities, some of
which could not have been given away six
months ago, are now selling at astonish-
ing prices. Ten per cent. is the regular
margin demanded by brokers, except in q
few cases of old customers who are known
to be amply responsible, OF whom five per
cent is accepted. but many of the more
| conservative brokers are now demanding
twenty per cent. margin on the so-called
fancy stocks, for they know that when the
crash comes the fancies may drop twenty
or thirty per cent. or more in day. and a
ten per cent. margin would be nowhere.
THE MANIA FOR SPECULATION.
The great rise has brought into the
street more outsiders than were ever seen
there before. OF course majority of
these are from this and the neighbOring
cities, but some of them are from afar,
men who have trunksful of wildcat
stocks and bonds that they never expect
ed to realize n cent on; men who have
fair securities that have been neglected
in times of comparative dullness, but have
now risen enormously, and men who come
with the fond hope that in the general
rush of prosperity they can somehow smug-
gle themselves into the elevator and go
up with the crowd. Some of the South
western visitors are rare old birds. One
of these. a tall, sun-burnt man, with big
fiat hat and an outlandish suit of clothes,
dropped in at brokers' office yesterday
morning. He carried under his arm
bundle. roughly done up in newspaper
and tied with cotton twine. Addressing
| clipper young clerk at the counter the
battered farmer asked: "Can leave this
bundle here little while 1t is so heavy
don't like to carry it around with me-"
MY friend" said the lively young man,
"we don't do a storage business here. We
are in the brokerage business"
IL know" said the old man, "but I'm
afraid might lose it. You keepit for me
little while.'
"All right" said the clerk. The old
man went out, and the young man threw
the bundle under the counter.
At about o'clock the old man came
back. .'Do you sell railroad bonds here ?"
he asked. I'VE do" said the clerk, .'lots
of 'em. Want to buy some?' and he
smiled inwardly. No" the old man re-
Piled; II want to sell some" The clerk
wondered which pocket the old man would
draw his bonds from and how small the
lot would be, and then asked him where
they were They're in that bundle left
here" he said, and the clerk picked it up
very much more carefully than he had
thrown it down.
The old man took out big jackknife,
cut the white cotton twine, unrolled the
bundle and discovered st. Louis and San
Francisco second mortgage bonds Of the
par value of 800, 900, present market val
ue about 60 cents on the dollar, making
the bundle that was kicked under the cOun-
ter worth about 100000. The clipper
young clerk didn't say any more about
not doing a storage business, but took the
old mans instructions as to the sale of the
bonds.
THE MINING STOCK CRAZE.
A year ago mining stocks began to be
talked about in New York, and many
shares, most of them worthless, were mar
keted and the business was growing rap
idlv. 1t was feared that mining stock
fever. such as has at times, notably in the
last bonanza excitement. brought disaster
upon San Francisco, might sweep New
York. But this last and unprecedented
rise in railroad and other securities has
completely overtopped the incipient inter-
est in mining stocks. The resumption Of
specie payments made every American
slap himself on the back and say, ''Great
country, sir, great country" The revival
in trade put new courage into everybody
and its continuance has fairly made the
American Eagle scream. The haste to get
| rich, always characteristic OF our people,
needed only this imitation of pride and
prosperity to set them all at it, and they
are going in with a vengeance. buying
ANYTHING and everything. Stocks that are
utterly worthless, of roads that could not
even with the most honest and economical
management be made worth anything for
years to come, are bought daily by tens
of thousands of shares. From all over
the country orders come in. Small cities
like Syracuse, for instance, or Utica or
New Hartford and many others have hour
ly or more frequently telegraphic quota
tons and turn stocks to an extent that
would have been thought madness year
ago.
/ LADIES TAKING HAND.
More ladies are dabling in stocks now
than ever before. They do not as some Of
them used to do. go personally to the street
in carriages. The stories that were told
in the time of the stock craze. during and
after the war, of elegantly dressed ladies
stepping from perfectly appointed equip
pages and sweeping gracefully" into bro
kers' offices, would not hold good now as