The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1884-01-25
TIE DAILY ARGUS.
Friday January %, 1884.
TRADING In STOCKS.
Some Comments Upon Various
"Ways that Are Dark
Watching the Tape in New York
Bucket shop The Seductive
Construction Company's
Victims.

NEW DIRK, Jan. 29.-"Gath" says: on
have no idea of the things hidden away in
lapyrinthian offices and rooms in the stock
exchange quarter of New York You go
in from Broadway at some doorway proba-
bly, between two banks or between two
bankers, to inquire for Smith or Jones, and
you find that there is no end to the
length of that corridor, because it goes
right through to the back part of the
stock exchange. All the way along are little
doors with a mere name upon them, hardly
an indication of the business within If YOU
should open any door by accident you would
find perhaps several persons seated reading
the papers or looking at the tape-measure
while behind mysterious desks, with high
partitions and little glass lookouts, the
brokers and clerks await the slaughter of the
innocents.
Push open another door and probably you
will find it to be the same kind of bucket
shop, or auction-room, not more than twelve
to twenty feet square, yet packed with chairs,
on which sit a number of persons, most of
these young, some middle-aged, and few
very old, who are busy reading quotations
that young man was writing upon the
blackboard. The figures tell how wheat next
July IS to sell, according to the gambling idea
IN Chicago; how the corn next MAY
will stand for delivery in Chicago; how
spareribs will sell at the close of February
for foreign export, and how lard will sell next
week. Not one of the persons sitting around
in those chairs ever expects TO put his little
finger in the lard, to eat one of the spareribs
or to handle the wheat and corn: but all are
gambling in those futures with degree and
depth and ignorance and innocence combined
that makes one of the curious features Of our
day and generation
This gambling seems to become natural to
very large proportionof Americans, espe
cIalIv those who have inherited or have the
capacity to earn some money, as once taking
up trade or starting a trading establish
ment was 1t is partly the result, or rather
The cause, of the long quotation columns in
the newspapers telling all the prognostica-
tons about weather, crops, freights, etc.
Stock gambling has been broken I'D by the
tricks played on the small operators-not
only by the b gger ones but by many of their
brokers. Il was the understanding that all
the big fish in the street were PLAYING
cross fires upon the little fish that
stopped speculation here, except
among professionals, good while ago. 4
man with little money had no chance at all
He found the large owners and developers of
these properties to be exceedingly democratic
people, and they would talk to him at the
Windsor hotel or at Delmonirn,s with as
much fatherhood as if he had been a. million
aire; but they were capable Of taking his little
money, just the same.
These pools failed after time to attract
anybody. and then construction companies
got to be organized to clean out the unwGrv
The construction company is the very Credit
Mobilier thing which made such an excite
ment about ten Years ago. That device seems
to nave been just what was wanted in Amer
lea; and while the press was declaininc
about the horrors Of Credit Mobilier, every
prominent railroad that has been built since
that day had Credit Mobilier of its own.
The theory was just this The Construc
ton company dazed the intellects of a LARGE
proportion of the spectators, lust as the
members OF congress who were so much
castigated also We're dazed by having busi-
ness proposition Of an intricate character mt
to them
Some people do not even know what bond
is. A bond is q certificate of a mortgage.
applying to all the property until the amount
OF the bond is satisfied You and conclude
to parallel the railroad from Cincinnati to
Chattanooga. We form company called the
Cincinnati & Chattanooga railroad We issue
the bonds Of this company as a mortgage
upon it, and if the interest upon the bonds is
not paid, the mortgage sells the railroad
out and it belongs to those who buy the
mortgage bonds. But we contract with our
selves as a construction company to create
the railroad, and to divide the profits between
the true cost of the road and the true amount
of those certificates.
John Jacob Aston bought 81 900, 900 worth
Of. the bonds of the West Shore railroad
while another man Of equal wealth sub
scri5ed 81 0000 900 10 the Construction com
pany. The bonds will some day bring what
has been paid for them, though it will take
time TO bring them up. But the Construc-
tion stock to every outsider has been dead
sv1ndle
If things had gone on as they started we
should have had construction company
Within two OF three years at the head of
which would have been Dr. Heber Newton.
Dr.. John B. Newman, the pope of
Rome, Moody and Sankey and Mathew
Arnold But before the thing had
got up to that point the North River Con-
struction company collapsed, leaving an in
UeTeSLlDS piece Oh ralToad nearly 0Ou miles
long not quite finished, rather poorly spon-
sored, and everybody asking, who was the
man that got me into itT'
There is but one reflection to make, and
that is that the railroads in a few years will
multiply intercourse, promote industry, re-
quire more steel and wood and work to keep
them up; and where they lead into new
country like the Northern Pacific they will
greatly multiply production, increase tillage,
widen the area Of our crops, and lead US on
to questions we begin to soc not far in the
distance confronting us.