The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1897-05-14
OUR WORST CRIME BREEDER.
A Speculative Mania Possessea tho
American People.

A Speculative Mania Possesses tho
American People.
Every time cashier takes passage
for Canada Or for that more distant
bourn whence there can never be, in
Shakspeare's opinion, any extradition
and the friends he leave behind him
find that his books will not balance the
chances are about hundred to one
that some kind of speculation" as it
has come to be denominated, has been
at the bottom of it. A few days ago
circle Of callow youths in Indianapolis
were found to be Jointly engaged in
taking flyers" on the stock market
and, since the little capital they owned
was soon exhausted, they resorted to
surreptitiously borrowing the money of
their employers.
The city or county treasurer who
falls short of making both ends meet
commonly gets into the tangle by rea-
son Of loans from ''the crib'' to his po-
litical friends, but even such cases are
not always free from the mania for
speculation.
If it shall prove that the university
funds, some part Of which it is now
feared is lost, have actually disap-
peared the chances are that it will also
prove to be because somebody has been
speculating and needed more money
than his or their own to keep margins
good.
Most of this has to be done, of course,
through somebody who makes busi-
nncS nf it-o to c,,aoly II
would never do for grave conservative
bank cashiers or the treasurers of
municipal or other public corporations
to be heard shouting frantically in any
kind of bourse, whether Of the So
called bucket or Of larger dimensions.
The other day one of these agencies
which profess to aid others in convert
ing nothing into something overreached
itself in New York and fell down,
doubtless carrying with it a more or
less long row Of patrons. How many
there are of these latter does not yet
appear, but the interesting part of this
transaction lies in the fact that the
agency itself appears to be as elusive
as flea. It was at first said that the
principal was woman whose identity
could not be established. Later it was
said that even this feminine suspicion
had faded like a ghost at cock crow.
A shrewd Frenchman once said that
whenever crime was committed the
obvious thing to do was to seek for the
woman at the bottom. But in nearly
all crimes of this class in this country
the thing to be first done is to seek for
the speculation which was the tempta-
ton.
The problem arising out Of this is a
grave one for civil and for criminal
administration. The moral error con-
sists in dignifying as legitimate busi-
ness that kind Of speculation which is
| really nothing more than gambling.
| There is kind of speculation and a
way of conducting it which is entirely
legitimate and honorable, but that
which POUNDS it's only hope Of gain for
one man on the equal and certain loss
of another is neither.
It may not wholly stop this kind of
so-called business to relentlessly punish
all who are detected in it, but it would
certainly check it, and how to attain
that end may better employ the in
genuity of our legislator than much of
that on which they now fritter away
their time and the peoples money
Chicago Chronicle.