Evening star., 1898-05-28

ket, unless he has cash for margins on his
contracts. He must be prepared to carry
from 10 to 10 million bushels of grain; and
for a margin of 10 cents a bushel 81 800 600
are needed. Mr.. Letter at one time was
obliged to use about S1O.0ooe00 for this
purpose. 1t is no joke to attempt to corner
wheat, as nearly every man who has at
tempted it has learned. One of the first to
make this discovery was James r. keene,
now of New York, who has since made sew
Ell al fortunes in Wall street and horse rae
ing. About twenty years ago Mr. Keene
came to Chicago with fortune. 1t is said
that he lost S2.ooo.Ooo before he gave up
trying to squeeze the Chicago bears. At
any rate he lost all he had.
Famous Deals.
The celebrated Handy deal occurred in
1881, when a Cincinnati speculator named
Handy anticipating scarcity in wheat,
began buying, until the price was advanc-
ed from 80 cents to Sl.25 bushel. 1t was
then that the famous speculator, Philip
Armour, entered the pit a leader on the
bear side. He sold contracts to Handy,
and was forced to settle at a heavy loss
The tables were turned later, when Handy
became a bear, and Armour forced the
price up to 81 40 to the utter ruin of Handy,
who the first victim of Armour's
speculative genius. George NJ. Pullman
and a number of traders of lesser note
v ere badly crippled by Armour in the
Plankinton corner of 1852. All of Armour's
immense resources were called into play,
and though wheat was plentiful and
large crop assured, all the July wheat
was acquired by Armour, and the
price kept at S1.3O until the bears had set
tied This was entirely contest of specu-
lators in which the side with the greatest
resources won. The futility OF q man at
tempting to corner the market with limit
ed capital was demonstrated in 1854 by
Harper, president of the Fidelity Bank of
Cincinnati. He forced the contract price
up to 81 cents and then the great bears
began to deliver cash wheat to him in an
attempt to break his back" Ten million
dollars worth of wheat was presented to
him; he could not buy it, SO he failed.
The most sensational wheat corner occur
red in 1883. The crop was very small that
year and Hutchinson slyly got control of
the visible supply of wheat. which was
only 29,oO0.000 bushels, and bought con-
tracts for September delivery at from so
to 80 c4nts. Two or three days before the
last day of September the bears discover
ed that there was scarcely any cash wheat
to be had. There WAS a rush of bears to
cover and the price went up to s..
Many fortunes Were lost. but ''Old Hutch"
was not much ahead after he sold all the
wheat he had bought In the same year
John H. Cudahy bought an immense
amount of May wheat. He underestimate
ed the supply, and after forcing the price
up to 30 cents he was obliged to unload at
a loss of several millions, WHICH went to
line the pockets of Philip Armour and the
bear leader, Edward Partridge.
Letters Achievement.
All operations of the past are dwarfed
by the achievements of Joseph Letter, the
youngest and the mcst brilliant operator
in the Chicago wheat pit. 1t is difficult
even to approximately estimate his win
nings, but the opinion of the leading wheat
brokers places them at about five millions.
Letters operations can hardly be called
running corner because he has actually
bought wheat and sold ii to consumers. 1t
is a remarkable fact that Mr.. Letter was
the first to take advantage of the scarcity
of wheat in Europe. No one knows whether
to credit this to his natural acuteness Or
information received from Rockefeller AMI
others, who, rumor says are behind him.
He began to buy July wheat i'll 1897, and is
said TO have taken eight million bushels at
an average of 6S cents, which he sold al
profit of eight cents bushel. The demand
for wheat increased, and Letter repeated
his performance in September. He declar-
ed, while the wheat pit smiled, that he was
a wheat merchant, not an exchange opera
tor, and that he expected to send his wheat
abroad. He began to buy wheat for De-
cember delivery and then Armour fought
him in earnest with the whole pit to help
1t seemed as If the daring fellow was DOOM
ed Just as the pit expected him to be