Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-11-13

| Nnen ne pets on the turn OF 4 card Or the
| result of race, he relies wholly on chance,
! he is outside the pale of commerce. The
| trouble with that travesty on the stock
/ brokers' busineSS-the bucket shops that
| dealers through it contribute nothing TO the
| result which they desire. While the com
| mission or legitimate broker IS the agent OF
| his principal. buying for hin as low aud
| selling for him rs high as possible, his in-
| terests and those of his principal are iden-
| teal The purchase or sale of shares con-
| tributes 20 the rise or fall OF prices: the
| buyer relieves the market of what he buys,
| which tends to enhance prices; while the
! seller supplies the demand. which tends 20
| lower prices. The bucket shop keeper,
acting under the gUise of broker or agent,
| is really the principal. He takes the OPP
| poslte side TO Whatever the customer may
wish to do, betting with him. that he. the
! customer, will De wrong. Thus, then, their
| interests are Numerically opposite. The
so-called business" itself is all between
| the customer and the - bucket shop "
| keeper, the result TO be determined by what
| the actual operations in the market may
| be. They do not enter the market 20 in
| tiuence prices ut all; they simply wager
that those who are commercially in the
! market will by their operations put prices
up or down. as the case may be. This IS
| gambling pure and simple. ! fear that
| bankers outside of Wall street do not always
| distinguish between the bucket Shop and
| the legitimate commission broker. The dlf-
| ference is as great as that between 4 genu-
| inc bill and a bad counterfeit. The bucket
| shop" keeper calls himself Il stock broker,
! just us the ChiropOdist calls himself aphySi-
! clan or the dancing master calls himself a
| professor.
| Here the moralist may again come in and
| say that form of buying and selling IS
| gambling lin the cotton, produce or stock
| eXchangeS) III which the buyer Is or ought
to be aware that he performs no social func
ton; when he comes in upon the market,
not 10 facilitate the distribution of COM
modities. not to supply legitimate CONNER
| ciai ventures with the necessary capital,
| but merely TO hold nominal and temporary
ownership for a few hours or few days III
the hope that by chance between his buy
ing and selling the price may rise
To condemn such operations, performed
by impulsive, uuthiuking ami restless specu-
latOrs, may be to assert a superior Iudg-
ment on them as pursuing losing princi-
pie of action, but TO say that the act of I
! man who holds an interest in a property
only an hour is morally different from
man who holds it u month or year is,
contend, false logic and poor sense. The
man who buys 4 hundred shares of stock
and sells it the next day may have gaInb-
lers instinct and no higher motive than
that of gambler, but nevertheless his act
is commercial: whether he provided the
money il whole or only i'll part, or bought
it entirely on credit, does not affect The
question. Somebody supplied the finds 10
pay for it, the stock was taken out of the
market, and certainly 1t is no crime to return
it to the market whenever the owner sees
fit. Neither does the facility for buying
and selling afforded by the margin plar
affect the morality of an act. margin IS
earnest money, it is a partial payment, and
though the word may have acquired sug-
gestiveness Of speculation peculiar to itself,
gagged property OF deposit against real
estate purchase. The broker, acting under
instructions from his principal, buys
hundred shares of Lake Shore stock, for
example, at Sl25 costing $4,000, which he
has to pay the seller. The principal may
wish to buy as an interest Investment
in expectation of money he is to receive
subsequently. or he may buy with a view
10 reselling later. and to secure the broker
he deposits $1,000 with him. The broker, if
his capital will permit. carries the stock in
his box in the safe deposit vault but if his
own capital is insufficient, as it usually Is,
to pay for all the stock he may buy in this
way. he takes the certificate to bank, and
putting, say $500 of his own money with
the $1,000 deposited by his client, he borrows
the additional $4,000 paid to the seller for
the stock, using II as collateral. Where,
pray, is there then anything very wicked or
out of the run of ordinary commercial prac-
Doubtless the very facility with which one
can undertake large operations tempts peo-
pie to engagements which often prove dan
gerous, if not disastrous, but the same OBJ
lection may with equal force be urged
against the credit system i'll all kinds of
business. We should not Danish steam be-
cause it is explosive, or electricity because
if embarrassed it becomes deadly. Men do
lose money in Wall street: they often bank
rupt themselves. Sometimes they do it
more quickly there than in slower kinds Of
business. but the record of trade is bad any
way. 1t tells US that, roughly speaking, 30
per cent of business men are unsuccessful
al some time in their career. Men often
lose money in Wall street because they as
sumo that they know more about the bust
ness than they do. Those who venture I'M
thinkingly into Wall street without train
ing are about as sure to lose their money as
Wall street men would be to lose their
money if without study and accurate knowl-
edge they rushed into 4 commercial bust
ness merely because they saw people who
were trained to it making large profits.
Then again Wall street is often visited by
persons who are, 50 to speak, at ''the end of
their rope" They have run down in their
owe business, or used up their capital in
eXtravagant living, and they go to Wall
street to make a final plunge. They fail,
and quick observers eXclaim that Wall
street wrought their ruin, when, as matter
OF IdCL 1t was Simply u uudICldl hospital 10
which they went for relief. Wall street is
not exactly health resort. but to charge all
misfortunes to it that are at last exposed
there. would be as reasonable as to charge
Colorado Springs with all the mortality re-
corded there. 1t has enough to answer for
OF its own account without eXaggeratiug its
responsibility.
THE UTILITY TT THE NIDDLRMAN.
Then as to the uselessness of brokers
which some unthinking persons are inclined
to claim. This ,brings up the question Of
the use of the middleman who, because,
forsooth, he does not himself indulge in
manual labor and does not create, with his
own hands, any tangible objects, is regarded
as a superfiuity. The middleman is an
agent of distribution; ne brings capital and
labor together; ne brings the products OF
remote regions to our doors, and sends our
surplus to feed hungry men in the crowded
populations Of Europe; he brings the prod
uct of the farm to the mill hand, and the
product of the factory to the plow boy.
The stock broker is simply niddleman
who handles title deeds rather than the ma
terial substances back of them.
1t should not be forgotten that one of the
great and striking characteristics Of mod
ern economical methods is, that through
the medium of transportation facilities and
middlemen, most distant parts of the world
are brought together, and the demand of
one section and the supply of the other are
equalized. In India, for example, b fore