Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-16

eight months have been enormous. There
remain bonds to be sold already issued or
In contemplation And the suspicion that
many bankers would discourage the buying
of stocks and encourage the purchase of
bonds for obvious reasons is difficult to es-
cape. However, il is from the commission
brokers' that the complaints about the pub
lie not being in the market chiefly come
ana they are. of course, the very men who
ought to know what the public is doing
since 1t is through them that the public
trades
In point of fact. the public is always in
'iie market TO some extent, and just now
II is safe to say that the volume of BUSH
ness IN stocks doing for and by the public
is greater than the tenor of the average
commission mans talk would lead cas-
ual observer to believe. 1t is true that
the public" which is now in the mar
ket is not large in number but it is i'm
portant enough in trading capacity The
plker public is not active, but the plunger
public Is. Timd outsiders NAV be deaf to
the call of the ticker. but the venturesome
are within hearing distance. And as far
as Its immediate market importance goes
margins being equal, it makes little differ
ence whether one man buys one thousand
shares or ten buy hundred each Scores
of representative houses are doing but
1.-THE of what they ought to do, in their
opinion. In a broad and active market,
out many others are doing as much BUSH
ness as they ever did. The public is in
the market. but it is in. spots and punches.
1t is not separating all the big men from
all their stocks and the shoestring gam
bier is not glaringly in evidence But
that public which is in is carrying an
aggregate amount quite large enough to
cause az much trouble as anybody would
care to see, If an accident" should force
Its holdings on the market.
Heavy Transactions.
Much has been written about the plung-
Ing proclivities of certain coteries and the
stupendous lines of stocks some more or
less spectacular spectators will swing"
these days. But it is to be doubted wheth-
| 'er the public at large is aware of the diff
ference between the stock spectators of
today and those. who were the active
traders as short time ago as the first
! Mckinley election. We have had good
| times almost uninterruptedly for eight
years and the interruptions have by no
! means been caused by really hard" times
The country is ever SO much richer now
| than them and men who at that time were
| only fairly well to do are today million
| aires. Some of the biggest plungers of
! 1908 are men who in 1897 were unknown
But not only have the nation and indi-
| viduals prospered, but the entire country
! has learned to speculate in stocks as never
| before. In 1901, at the heighth of the
boom, everybody gambled. Today the craze
| is not violent. And yet we have stock
| commission firms, not one but many who
| will do more business in the number of
| shares bought and sold in one day than
| was done In the stock exchange in several
! days in 1897. There is no boom and yet
| one stock exchange house alone has, it is
| reputed, 2300 more or less live accounts on
| its books. Cut this in half, knock Off "a
| per cent from the estimate, to allow for
the habitual American extravaganza of
| speech and there remains to that firm an
amount of business, considering that the
public" is not in the market, which
makes one wonder what this and other
firms would do if the public were in it up
to the neck, as in 1901.
That is probably why the average man