The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-03
FIREWORKS PLAY
 IN WALL STREET Great Field for Specialists and
 Market Leaders CAFES DUPES J. P. MORGAN Western PIunger Plays Trick on Mon arch of Finance in the Hamilton
 and Dayton-Perre Mar
 quette Deal-Gossip.
DUPES J. P. MORGAN
BY w. G. NICHOLAS.

New York, December 2.-This has been
 a great market for the field marshals and for the specialists gifted with quali- ties of leadership. It has been d market peculiarly susceptible to manipulative in
 fiuences, and those who were in posi-
 ton to do things made the most of their opportunities. A great many of the
 pups" "cats" and dogs" as the mar
 ket odds and ends and new things are called, were taken up and moved into
 line with the better known sort which had enjoyed previous advances. More recently the better class of securities be-
 came comparatively inactive, being neg lected for the things with fireworks at
 tachments. The tape players had little
 time for such old fogy stocks as Penn sylvania, New York Central, Illinois Gen.
 tral, Louisville and Nashville and Union
 Pacific while they could get five and ten
 point action in a single day in National Lead, Tennessee Coal and Iron, Ameri- can Woolens, Anaconda, Shelters and
 other splitting and fizzing things. Specu- lation in the specialties might be hazard ous, but it certainly could not be truth fully described as monotonous.
 The banking. interests and conservative commission houses do not like to see sky rockety and zigzag markets such as have prevailed during the last week or ten days. They know some one is going to get hurt and they trim their own sails and arrange their own affairs so that no catastrophe shall occur in their im-
 mediate neighborhood. Banks merciless- 1y discriminate against pooled and ma- nipulative stocks, and well handled com
 mission houses refuse to execute orders t,4t Aa1 Ia gins.
 Business in sputtering specialties In times of such excitement is usually con- fined to the professionals on the floor o1 the exchange and to that semi-profes- sional element which sits around the
 brokers offices hungrily watching every
 quotation as it Is marked up on the black
 board or announced by the ticket reader.
 These people cannot resist the temptation
 to gamble depending on their alertness
 and agility to escape loss. Inevitably
 they get nipped and Wall street covered waist deep with the bleached bones of
 such as they Sickening slumps always follow such periods of crazy manipula-
 ton. They are just as certain as the
 night is to follow day. If the chronics
 can't get action in stocks they turn their attention to wheat, corn, cotton or the ponies to keep their nerves atingle and feed the fever.
 1 The bob-tailed people have reaped many
 a fat harvest. The one in National Lead made a substantial killing on a straight
 away rise of more than twenty points. The story has gone the rounds that the
 manipulators caught in their net two or
 three of the big insiders of the Smelting l Trust and pinched them for round lump sums. Just before the last sharp rise in
 Lead the positive statement went out from the office of the Smelling Trust
 that negotiations for a merger in the lead companies were positively off and would not be resumed. The tidings were given the widest circulation and bore the stamp of authority Then the specu- lative contingent allied to the trust in-
 creased it's short line of Lead and there-
 by sold itself still further into the hole. The terrific advance which followed found
 them entirely unprepared and unprotect- ed. The stock was cornered and they had nothing to do but pay the penalty which
 not infrequently attaches to the crime of selling something which belongs to an- other fellow. The only sure way to make
 money in Lead is to place your bet on some other card.