Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-19
SournaI arlo G0ntitr.
SINGLE COPIES THREE CENTS.
Thursday, July 19. 1883.

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 l MT. Henry D. Lloyd has done 8 great deal
 to call public attention to some of the evils
 of speculation, and in the current number of
 the North American Review he forcibly deals with speculation in provisions. He points out that the industry of the producer is be- ing overlaid by an apparatus of exchanges
 These exchanges are ''the creameries'' of the 1 world of labor. The prices of the specula- tive wheat and the spectral hog of the Board | fix those of the real wheat and the actual | hog of the field. The man who works in | the ground must take the price fixed for | him by the man who works in the air. The manufacture of prices. like other modern in- ] dustries, is being concentrated into vast es- tablishments, and these are passing under the rule of bosses and syndicates. The markets, like political parties, are run by the machine. The Chicago Board of Trade offers the largest and fsvorite field for the cornerer. It is willing to give or take unlim- tied quantities at the figures it makes. It can put the combination of rich men in in- stant possession of the crop that Is in market and of contracts for all that is to come. The morale of the Board permits the millionaires who have solicited these con- tracts, and ''forestalled" the market for the purpose of making others break them, to put prices to any height in order to exact fatal damages from their victims. It is the code of honor among wolves that no high minded lamb will squeal. The same class that administers trusts for the trustee, runs corporations to wreck the small capitals they were intended to consolidate, and finds only private use in public fran chises, is burrowing into the Board of Trade to kill trade. The passion for enslaving, for bidden by squeamish civilization to buy men, finds vent in capturing the raw ma terial of human life.
 Having thus and in other equally graphic sentences set forth the situation Mir. Lloyd calls attention to the s'big deals'' which have taken place at Chicago since 1879. By these 'deals'' the price of pork was more than doubled, four was put up an average of two dollars barrel and beefsteak at least one cent pound MT. Lloyd thinks that the strikes into which the laboring people have been forced in the last two years are trscea- ble directly to the increase in the cost of liv- ing, which these corners have done so much to produce. The loss from these strikes has been incalculable. That at Pittsburg alone is estimated to have cost at least ten million dollars. The following sentence is from petition to Congress to which member of the Produce Exchange personally obtained the signatures of "a thousand substantial men:'' ''As only men of large means or extensive credit are capable of engaging in these enterprises, they become essentially an array of capital against the in dustrial classes, wherein the banks and mon eyed institutions are almost invariably drawn to the support of the former against the lat ter" This kind of work MT. Lloyd calls says that in order that the members of the syndicates may play their game of forfeits inside the Board, thousands who cam ot get enough to eat must act tragedy outside. Civilization forms an acquiescent ring around these thugs of the Board and Produce Ex- change, when it knows that every movement of their struggle within intensifes the uni versal struggle for existence without.
 All this is deplorably true. and the time is coming when there will be at least an attempt to make change for the better. The peo- pie will not always tamely submit to having the prices of their provisions fixed at starya- tion figures by gamblers. MT. Lloyd is prcb ably correct in thinking that none but na- tional regulation will keep the gamblers in provisions within limits, but it will be very difficult matter to invent and apply remedy.