The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-07-28

profits by buying at one price and sell
ing at another and higher price.
This is in fact the usual course OF bust
ness, and it is this that makes the
world go round.
While it is easy to account for the
fact that the generality of people buy
for rise, it is not SO easy to explain
or understand why they buy all the
more eagerly after stocks have
taken a rise, more or less sustained
in duration and largo in amount.
The theory appears to be, il
indeed there is any theory about
it, that the more they have risen
the more chance there is that they will
keep on rising. South Sea shares in
the last century were never SO eagerly
competed for as when they were selling
at many times par; and when tulip
bulbs in Amsterdam were quoted at
one hundred forms each, more people
wanted them than when they were
plentiful at ten forms. 1t would ap-
pear that the human mind, when I'M
trained in finance, regards the price as
a measure Of real value, overlooking
the fact that price is merely an ex-
preston of opinion, and that opinion
is one of the most variable and incon-
slant factors that go to make rp con-
duct. Nothing is constant in relation
to values except necessity. Men must
eat. therefore wheat will always have
value; they must be clothed, therefore
cotton will always have value; they
must have income, therefore enter
prises that are sure to yield income
will always have value. All schemes
and all operations come to this crucial
test at last; sooner or later people
wake up to the truth that the test Of
anything lies in its relations to human
needs, and exists only there.
On general principles, just in proper
ton as any valuation mounts the ten
dency on the part of all underlying
circumstances is to pull it down again.
We are all familiar with gravitation.
The small schoolboy sings: What
goes up must come down either on your
head or on the ground" And although
the rhyme is faulty, the urchin has
grasped profound truth. Yet when
the A B c railroad shares are elevated
from fifty to one hundred the inexperi-
enced public begin to yearn for them.
When they were fifty there could only
be loss Of fifty dollars share; when
they touch one hundred and ninety
there can be loss of one hundred dol
lars a share. This doubles the risk at
tendant on a purchase, and in fact
more than doubles it, because it is
much easier to knock off points from
hundred valuation than from a fifty
valuation. A wave at the bottom is
large and firm, at the top it is slender
and weak; and the same is true of the
price of any commodity. There is
safety at the base and risk at the
top; and yet the public invariably
come into the swim at the top.
To change the figure they climb to the
apex of the pyramid just in time to
catch the earthquake that demolishes
the whole Of the structure except the
base.
Women. too. are disposed to hang on
to purchase with great,pertinacity. a
habit which sometimes leads to excel
lent results But they are as rule
too much addicted to taking advice and
acting on what other people tell them
without weighing their motives,
whether actuated by a,sehsh interest
or not. Yet their intuftions are often
surprisingly profound and-correct. My
opinion is that if women were trained
in finance as men often are, they would
furnish the markets wita,,a valuable
body of rapid and successful operators:
but since this is'hardly an attainable
condition they must be claa;ed as anna
teurs, very few of whom achieve sue
cess HENEi CLEwA