The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-05-07

1t is mostly trustworthy. This class of
facts must be distinguished from rumor
Rumor is, as rule. contemplate
and untrustworthy. 1t has been COM
pared to an animated thing that begins
its career by being small and compact,
but as it stalks along it becomes
larger and less definite as to form,
until at last it is like a monstrous
cloud that has neither shape nor con-
slstence, and finally disappears, no one
knows how or where. But to study
facts leads to generally quite accurate
conclusions; and accurate conclusions
! are ant to lead to wise transactions
Thus the facts of large harvests in
the year 1891 in the United States,
coupled with the facts Of poor harvests
in Europe in the same year, led TO the
conclusion that our grain would be in
demand for foreign shipment, and
that ~the earnings of our railroads
would be increased. The conclusions
were sound and the earnings were in
creased, and judicious students of the
market bought stocks for rise. Then
the fact that stock rose and kept on
rising. coupled with the fact
that the general public was
buyer, and with the additional
fact that the public prefers to be
buyer, and to buy at high prices and
not to buy at all unless prices are high,
led these same judicious students to
sell the same stocks during the preva-
lence of high prices; both the stocks
li/.h
which they did not own. Again, the
study Of facts led to wise conclusions,
and these ended in successful results.
Both as bulls and as bears the wise
students have Jared well The care
less and superficial public, coming in
too late as bulls, found themselves at
last compelled to become unwilling sell
lers at greater or less losses; in some
cases so severe as to shatter households
and drive citizens to ruin, if not to
crime.
The person who studies real values
must not be content with that, he
must also study the facts that in times
of stress and storm real values often
fluctuate as wildly in manner if not in
ties, and that no operation on margin
is really safe unless the margin is
large beyond the ordinary run, and is
backed by equally large reserves
Some financial teachers lay it down
that your risks should not exceed twen-
ty-five per cent of your capital.
This is excessive prudence; but the
man who keeps half mile
away from the edge of cliff will
never fall off from it. One who has
studied the share market carefully has
eventually found that if he is able to
pay one-half the market price of his
holdings, he need have little fear as to
the other half; that is, on judicious
selections of properties. No mention
is made here of shares that sell in De-
cember at seventy-two and in March
at thirty. Whoever buys such goods
should pay for them and put them
away, and incubate upon them with
the patience attributed to the hopeful
setting hen.
The student of the stock market at
the present period has no easy task be-
fore him. Imports are large, exports
are small. We sell to foreigners mil
lion per week Of cotton and buy from
them two millions per week of Coffee
the cotton yielding us small profit, the
coffee yielding foreigners an immense
profit. Other nations do not seem to |
banker greatly for our grains as against /
those of Russia and the east The /
United States is issuing currency based /
on an estimate of the value of bar
silver, which is not in accord with the /.
estimate entertained by the rest OF the /.
world: we haven't gold enough to go
around; we don't seem to have currency /
enough to go around and the indebted /
ness of corporations and individuals /
acts as q constant menace to the /
natural tendency of aggregations of
loose capital to lend themselves out to /
useful enterprises.
Yet at the bottom of all this turbu- /
lent mass of facts there are natural I
laws at work which, if we study .
them out in relation to the objects
which they control, will be found to be
as sure in their operation as sunrise
The collapse of the Ubiquitous coal
com bination, as cruel as a combination
would be to raise the price of water or
air, was the result of natural law. Ger
tain deep and wise students acted &C
cordingly The same class of laws are
busy to-day, and the facts are always
with us, 1t is the business of the dill
gent to profit by them.