The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-05-11
IN THE FINANCIAL WORLD.

This particular buying has been va-
 riously attributed to one of the con- tending parties for the control of
 Northern Pacific and to a speculator
 who Intentionally sought to corner the street and squeeze the shorts. In any event the stock was cornered and the shorts were thrown into alarm and their unavailing efforts to find re- sources to meet their obligations served as the shock which toppled over the airy fabric of stock market prices, reared on insufficient credit, which therefore came crashing down. On Wednesday night shorts paid as high as $500 for the privilege of borrowing one hundred shares of Northern Pa- cific common for delivery next day. On Thursday the stock sold for $1, GOO per share and the shorts began throwing over holdings of old stocks on the weak market to realize money and threw the
 market into spasn of unprecedent- cd violence. The disclosure growing out of the Northern Pacific episode, that bitter and apparently irreparable an1mosfty had grown up amongst con- tending groups of the country's large capitalists shattered confidence in all the supposed measures to secure com- munfty of interests and the abolition of costly competition among railroads. It seems incredible that with an outstand- ing share capital of 800. 900 shares, the shorts could not borrow or buy shares for delivery at any price, and it marks
 the desperation of the struggle for con- trol of the property that neither party would consent to lend of their abun- dant supply of stocks even to relieve the panic which was damaging vast projects of their own as well as bring ing ruin and disaster to others, for fear that the stock once out of their hands. would be used to defeat their claims to control. The collapse also revealed the purely speculative char acter of the great part of the recent large buying which has been readily
 attributed by the heated imagination of the spectators to buying for invest ments and control by the great rail- road systems, to be taken out of the market and placed in strong boxes and The vaults of trust companies. The completeness of the collapse seems to have thoroughly cleared the market of the recklessly speculet tive holders and the market quickly realized that the low prices to which prices fell in the demoralization of Thursday were as unreal and as far from representing their true values as were the inflated prices to which the boom had carried them. The bargain hunter appeared in Wall Street with the funds which he never hazards in speculative booms and shows a willingness to pay prices for stocks above those touched in the panic and which would mean insolven- cy for many commission houses. The taken by the banks to supply the needed money and the settlement with the Northern Pacific shorts quiet ed the acute fears of holders of stocks and greater degree of confidence be- gan quickly to be re-established. But 1t Is not to be assumed that the nec- essary adjustments of damages result ing from Thursdays shock are to be completed in a day.
 Bonds shared in the demoralization of stocks but to much less extent Ap- part of the selling of bonds were for the purpose of procuring funds to buy stocks at the low levels. United States new As declined 3-4 and the 3s and 5s 1-2 per cent below the closing call of last week.