The age-herald., 1900-06-04
WALL STREET FAILURE
 AND ITS PLAIN LESSON

From the New York Herald.
 The failure that fluttered the financial centers yesterday merely repeats the oft inculcated lesson of the folly of attempting to corner or artihciaily advance the price of any great natural product.
 It is only two years since MT. Joe Letter paid an enormous fee for tuition in this great principle He tried to corner wheat, and possibly thought he had succeeded when for a minute on the Chicago board of trade it sold at $1.S5 a bushel
 As always happens in such circum- stances home consumption decreased, for eign purchasers turned to other markets, and, coincident with this curtailment or demand, the supply was increased-farmers scraping their bins and wheat being raked out of unthought of holes and corners. The farmers and few lucky spectators for fall got MT. Letters money, and he got the experience.
 Not very long before that Mir s. V. White, then a conspicuous figure in Wall street, conceived the brilliant notion of cor nering the corn crop. As his capital was afterward said to be less than half a mill lion dollars and this country produces two thousand million bushels of corn, he incl dentally suspended payments, but his friends said that didn't detract from the brlliancy of the conception.
 There must be a fascination about gam bling on this gigantic scale, for the down. fall of one operator or clique does not de- ter others from engaging in similar at tempts MT White made his campaign with full knowledge of the fact that only
 
 Keene had been laid by the heels through an attempt to corner wheat. These are only a few notable deals" of the sort which will recur to the minds of all read CTS, but persons who follow the course of events on the great exchanges will recall that many less ambitious attempts were made in the intervals to corner as much of one or another product as was sup posed to be available for delivery under contract at some specific period.
 From the facts so far as known it seems that the downfall of Price, Mccormick & Go. was mainly due to overbuying of cotton in an attempt to bolster up it's value in a falling market, and perhaps trying also to corner the supply for delivery during cer- tain summer months-futures'' or "op- tions," as these contracts are called Last years yield of cotton in this country was nine and one-half million bales, and in each of the two preceding years the crop exceeded eleven millions. Although the three years output was equal to as much as had been produced In the preceding four years, the comparative shortage in last years harvest and unfavorabe reports as to the condition of the growing plant contributed to advance the price until cot ton this spring sold at the highest prices touched in ten years.
 When the demand for fabrics slackened and the purchases of spinners diminished and the raw commodity began to decline the firm, it is said, increased it's purchases; but cotton continued to sag, and yesterday the end was reached. Price, Mccormick x Co. suspended payments with liabilities of thirteen million dollars and assets not stated-although members of the firm are hopeful that they will pay every creditor in full-while cotton sold 1 1-3 cents a pound under the high price scored some weeks ago. The suspension will doubtless be taken as the text for the usual sermons from pulpit and the agrarian press about the evils of dealing in contracts for the fu- ture delivery and receipt of cereals and products.
 Such contracts, however, are indispensa- ble to the conduct of busness-as, for in stance, when spinner makes contracts ahead for textiles and simultaneously in- sures his supply of the raw material by future" purchases and where they are made the medium of gigantic and reckless speculations it is satisfactory to note as a matter of history that it is upon the specu- lators that the resulting losses fall and not upon the community.