The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-01-10
A Wheat Trust.


which appeared in the central
MINNEsoTIAN," the local Pope COun-
ty Paper which developed into the
GREAT WEST, we have been request
ed to present to our readers again
the idea of a "WHEAT TRUST
The words were not well taken. 1t
implies a conspiracy to defraud. The
combination which we brought out
nearly three years ago was not
Trust in the strict sense of the word,
but the establishment of a Sellers
Board, on much more legitimate
principles than the buyers Board
now debating the price of produce
through gambling operation in
Chicago.
BUYERS ARE BEARS.
Under the present organization OF
commerce, of course a buyer is
bear-that is, one who tries to bear
down the market. Every one tries
tobuy cheaply. II it be urged that
he who buys to sell tries to sell high.
we reply-on the Board" the buyer
has already sold! All old specula-
tors. all regular dealers on the Board,
are bears. They sell futures. Or
they sell for immediate delivery and
then purchase. One-half OF the gam
bling gang-the hooters, hOWlers
and scalpers, are of course Bears.
And nearly all the fresh young lambs
T ,1>c,s s,vsn pY111c
that is, the Lambs try to ''hist' the
market. And as against the Bears,
the market is always kept down to
the lowest possible point. An eXcep-
ton is when several Bears unite to
speculate and "Bull the market. "
Now against the tremendous inf1u-
ence OF these three to ten thousand
bowling madmen it is folly for the
farmer to act single handed. He is
absolutely pOwerless. He is breath
against a whirlwind.
But the Boards of Trade carry with
them certain conditions which won
derfully weaken their pOwer-a con-
dition with which the veteran gam
bier is familiar-but which the farmer
has never realized.
THE VISIBLE SUPPLY.
Therecan be no bear pressure with
out a visible supply. OF course 999
out of every 1000 deals are mere
gambling deals Each broker has a
card, blue printed on one side, red on
the other. On one side he gets down
his purchases as they are taken up
by nod or finger motion from the
maelstrOm of auction offers. On the
other side he notes with equal speed
the sales which he makes in the same
way. If the prices of the sales ag-
gregated one side of the card amount
to more than the purchases on the
other, no matter in what order they
were made, he is a gamer. Ii not,
he is a loser. Now every regular, ex-
perienced dealer who handles large
amounts-that is, every one but a
scalper and Lamb, or one OF the
herd of fresh fry, operates to sell on
the basis OF the amount of visible
supply. Ii man has to take the
wheat when purchased he is general
lv safe enough. But the "seller"
knows that he MAY have to de-
liver hundreds of thousands of bush
els. He never knows who buys
what he sells. Someone has to de-
liver. A deal may balance off from
20 mems cards, and turn up on his !!
The wheat must be Gin sight" some
where!
Hence. if there were not an i'm
mense amount of wheat in sight up
goes market like a rocket. 1t is the
visible wheat which furnishes the hot
plate for bear-dancing.
Now, if the farmer would furnish a
Sellers Board, they could checkmate
the gamblers. Checkmate them! !!
Great Cesar, if the farmers OF Dako-
ta and Minnesota would but put the
''sale''-not the Ownership-Of 30
million bushels of wheat into the
hands of
BOARD OF FIVE MEN
They would see more tears, hear
more cries, and listen to more
agOnized music in one week than
transpired under the shadow OF
Tamerlane's monument of seventy
thousand human skulls! Those five
men would have the world by the
throat. Forty million dollars
wouldn't t measure the stakes at issue
in that Chicago wheat pit. A rise or
drop of five cents throws the Board
into the widest paroxysm. 1t is pa
thetic to see @'Old Hutch get the
'boys" in a corner for four or five
million bushels, and then squeeze
'em let 'em Off at $500 a bushel AS
A FAvoR-and see old men come and