St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-03-05
sEIGNIoRAGE IN WHEAT.

Once upon time there was a great
financier. His name might have been
Bland, but it wasn't, and what it was is
immaterial. Only his scheme of getting
rich is of moment. He had read about
the alchemists who had tried to wrest
from Nature her secrets of making the
precious metals. and he had read, too.
how railway presidents had had their
board of directors resolve that their
road was worth twice or thrice what it
had cost, and had voted an issue of the
additional stock to themselves equal in
value 10 the value they had created by
vote, voted and sold the stock to the
dear investing fools and had become
millionaires. He became infatuated
with the idea of getting wealth out of
nothing.
As the alchemists had failed, and as
the investing fools were all poor, rich
only in worthless stock, he turned his
attention TO wheat. He knew that the
statutes of all the states in which wheat
is bought and sold decreed that sixty
pounds of wheat should make one
bushel, and that measure contain
ing some 2,l50 cubic inches was also a
buShel, coined bushel, as it were. 1t
made no difference with the law
whether the wheat weighed sixty
pounds more or less; sixty pounds of it
should be a bushel, and, by the same
token. bushel measure filed was also
bushel. The law said so, and that
was the end of it.
Coincidently with this there came a
series of seasons in which there was
altogether too much heavy rain and
hot sunshine just when the wheat in
the fields was in the milk or the dough,
and the hot sun heated the vapors fol-
lowing the rains and scalded the wheat
and Shriveled it so that, as the scales
went. but not as the law said, thirty
pounds was all that the wheat weighed
which struck bushel measure held.
Here was the golden opportunity for
the great tinancier. Between the law
with its sixty-pound bushels and its
measured bushels, and the blight with
Its thlrty-pound bushels, there was
the chance for a Napoleon in finance to
make himself easily and immensely
wealthy. Nothing was easier. So he
set himself and his agents to buying
wheat. He was careful, however, as
any prudent business man would be, to
see that he got sixty pounds of the
thirty pound wheat for every bushel he
bought. He flied his granaries, and
built more. He kept OH buying and
renting and building warehouses and
giving his notes for the wheat and raIs-
ing the rents on his tenants. increasing
the interest on his loans, and using the
gains to buy the shruuken wheat.
Then, when the harvest was over and
he had bought all the wheat that he
could get, he made his master stroke.
People had been wondering what he
meant; some limited that he had gone
daft and some Of his relatives began to
confer together as to the need of APP
pointing a guardian. But ne kept his
own counsel and told them to keep
theirs. His plan was very simple. A
bushel of wheat is that quantity OF
wheat which will be contained in q
measure containing 2, $50 cubic inches,
| reasoned the financier. II have bought
all this wheat getting sixty pounds for
each bushel. But each measured bushel
contains only thirty pounds. Now it is
plain that for every bushet of wheat
| have bought by weight | have two
pound bushels by measure. Instead of a
million bushels that bought by weight
l have 10000 bushels by measure.
This is what these fellows in congress
must mean by seigniorage. Why
shouldn't issue warehouse receipts for
my Seigniorage and sell them? That
will be regular, for haven't [ twice as
many measured bushels as bushels by
weight, and can't L call my bushels
measure bushels if want to?"
So the great financer forthwith Issued
his certificates, or warehouse receipts,
for enough bushels to represent his
"seigniorage." emitting to specify in
| the papers the kind of bushel, and sold
them to the public and became mill
ionaire and was made president of two
or three insurance companies and a
| director in all the banks in town; and
the people pointed him out to the
| stranger and said, under their breath,
That is our great Napoleon Of finance"
! and they sent him to congress, where he
has ever tince been trying to make
something out of nothing by act of con-
greSS.