The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1907-02-01
Against Gambling in Farm
Products.
Make it Apply to All Crops.

Representative Jack Beall of Texas
has before congress bill which is in-
tended to prevent market manipulators
from gambling in the future prices of
cotton, by making it a criminal offense,
and forbdding the use of the mails and
telegraph wires in such traffic.
We doubt the feasibility of some feat
ures of the bill in question, but it is in
the line of much needed legislation, and
it should not only apply to cotton, but
to all crops whose future prices are
gambled in, and members of congress
from the regions that produce wheat
corn, oats and other like crops should
see to that.
If gambling is crime, and human
laws are competent to so declare and
annex penalties for their violation, then
dealing in futures" as it is called, is or
may be declared crime, and those who
engage in it may be punished, as other
volators of the law are punished. Every
element of game of chance enters into
these transactions. Not one of them is
a bona fide deal. 1t is simply a wager
that the price of the commodity at a
certain future time will oe named
sum, and the stake is the difference, one
way or the other, between the price gam
bled on aud the actual price when the
time arrives. In order to increase the
value of the stake immense quantities of
the commodity, often more than it would
be possible to deliver, sometimes aggre-
eating more than the world has or can
produce, are sold and bought in these
pretended deals, thus setting at defiance
every principle of the law of supply and
demand, about which the defenders of
the system have so much to say.
This is far-resching and harmful in
many ways. The "wind" products that
are dealt" in by these gamblers are
brought into direct competition with
the products of honest labor, again de-
flying the law of supply and demand.
But perhaps the worst is that when
these deals" are made two strong and
opposing elements enter the market sit
uation, one of them determined, in order
to win his bet, to force prices up above
the figures gambled upon, the higher
above the greater his winnings; the
other equally determined to pull the
price below the figure gambled on in or
der to win his bet, and the farther be-
low the greater his winnings. These are
the so called Bulls" and Bears" of the
Board of Trade ard this is a true pic
ture of how the prices are made by the
usual market system, on cotton, wheat,
corn, oats and all other crops that enter
into these transactions. For any advo-
cate of that system to speak of the law
of supply and demand is to advertise his
own ignorance, to presume upon the ig-
norance of the people, or to defy every
principle of truth and veracity.
Our law makers and courts, who are
thought to be, and ought to be, the
guardians of truth, right ana justice. if
they permit such a system to continue,
betray the trust the public repose in
them, and outrage the powers with
which their constituents have clothed
them.
No stronger argument for the organ
ization of farmers and all in any way
allied to their great industry, and even
the friends of fair dealing and truth, as
we'll as of the stability of business-no
stronger argument for the organization
of all these classes IN one strong, solid
and efficient body, could be offered than
a continuation of this miserable system
Of price making and gambling-Up to
Date Earning.