Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-11-05
is NOISE WHAT YOU WANT?
Then Try the Cotton Pit on Lively
Day.

Day.
They may make more noise on the
Stock Exchange-why shouldn't they?
There's more of 'em, but" said a
stranger who is enjoying himself see
ing the sights Of the city. I'D almost
be willing to bet there's no fifty men
on the Stock Exchange that could
make as much uproar as fifty picked
men of the Cotton Exchange, and II
you don't believe that you ought to go
down and hear the cotton men holler.
you don't know about that? You've
never been in the Cotton Exchange?
No, l suppose not. That's the way
with you New York folks.
you've been to Europe and the
Rocky mountains and Alaska and
Hongkong, but you've never been
much around your own town. Well,
I've been down to see the Cotton Ex-
change myself, and l like it.
big room. $50 feet long or there
abouts, and maybe 60 or 70 feet wide.
Desks along across one end and scat
tered around, and along a stretch on
one side a battery of telegraph instru-
ments with operators always busy. If
there's ever any letup in the hollering
on the floor you can hear the telegraph
chorus coming in, for the men at the
keys are always pounding away.
They don't have trading posts scat
tered around on the floor here like they
do on the Stock Exchange, but here
they do their trading around what
they call the pit. The pit is formed Of
stout brass railing set in a circle in
the middle of the floor and having run
ming around 1t. outside, an annular
platform. The railing makes circle
about twenty feet in diameter and 1t
Is very stoutly braced so that people
crowding against it can't push 1t over.
They don't get inside the railing to
trade, but stand around outside Of 1t.
The annular platform around the pit
Is three steps high; that is to say
there are three steps up to the top Of
it from the floor outside, and then three
steps down on the inner side, which is
within two or three feet Of the rail-
1.-The brokers stand around close to
the railing and look across to the man
opposite or anywhere around It, and
on busy days when there are more men
on the floor than can get to the rail
they stand on the steps Of the railing
platform where they can see over the
heads of the men in front and so down
into and across the pit, and when you
get the pit crowded in that way with
men all holering as loud as they can
and that telegraph battery firing con-
tinuously filling in the chinks, why
you get a clamor that for anybody that
likes that sort Of thing is nothing less
than exhilarating.
"One thing l didn't understand at
first sight was a little heap of closed
camp stools lying on the floor in the
clear space in the pit within the rail-
ing, but l discovered about that later
when saw a man pull out one of those
stools and sit down on it at the rail.
So l infer they must have days when
they sit around the pit railing, COM
Iaratively few in number, and talk
across to one another in some degree
of quiet But they weren't quiet this
day. The rail was crowded and there
were punches of men standing around
on the platform steps and they were
all shouting.
They'd lean over the railing till I
thought some of them would break
themselves in two on it. as if they were
trying to get as close as they could to
the men on the other side they were
at. and as a man howled he'd
raise his right hand with his arm up
as high in the air as he could raise
1t. and with more or less Of his fin
gers extended straight, and then he'd
bring that hand down with a savage
sweep at the man on the other side he
was hollering to as if he were trying to
hurl a bale of cotton, or thousand
bales at him, and then the other man
and this one would stop n second or
two and each write something down
On a pad he carried in his left hand,
and then they'd both start in again
again with the rest.
Il couldn't understand a blessed
word they said, except that every now
md then you'd see somebody shake his |