Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1908-09-10
SELLING WHAT DOES NOT EXIST.

-------OTO---------
 SELLING WHtT DOES NOT EXIST.
 The New York World. commenting upon some recent transactions which startled even the speculative arena in which they took place, says some pretty harsh things about the New York Stock Exchange; probably not harsher, however, than conditions Iacrit.
 Here is the striking and emphatic manner in which the World puts it:
 Wall street itself is curiously cred u!ous of it's town honor But any man outside it's feverish atmosphere who believes that the sale in a single year in a single exchange in single city of a volume of securities twice as great as the entire railway capitaliza- tion of the country is a legitimate and necessary business-that man is fit and woody candidate for the shearing pen. Any man who thinks that, by comparison with this stupendous ruin wreaking, blood-bespattered cheat, race track, gambling is more than trifing evil is headed for the asylum of lost intellects.'
 Continuing it's pointed analysis, the World might have gone further and with slight amendment, applied the foregoing paragraph to another Wall street institution-the New York Cot ton Exchange.
 Striking out the words securities" and in the same sentence railway capitalization and substituting there for the words cotton" and cotton crop respectively, We have a charac- terization that so closely fits the latter institution as to impel instant recog- milton.
 Here is one exchange in single year selling a volume of securities twice as great as the entire railway. capitalization of the country, and an- other scarcely block away selling in the same period of time twice as much cotton as the worlds entire produc- tion, if not more
 We know of no one outside the inn mediate arena of these transactions, who would attempt to contend that this is Legitimate and necessary business"
 Nor do we believe there is any one who will seriously contend that even a respectable percentage of it is legi- innate or necessary.
 The Constitution pointed out at the time when the New York legislature measure under consideration, that it was going after minnows when there were whales floundering around and disturbing the waters.
 The speculative exchanges, as they are now conducted, are nothing more nor less than gambling dens beside which the betting of the race track and the rouge ct noir' of Monte Carlo pale into an insignifcance that is microscopic.
 We applaud the fight of Governor Hughes and the New York legislature aeainst the iniquity of race-track bet ting. but we protested at the same time, that while stretching the net he should gather in the big fish along With the herring.
 The speculative exchanges not only spread their tentacles to the country's eNtremeties claiming victims every where, but in the case of products of the soil they are used as weapons to batter down the prices of the produc- CTS property and to defraud him of his legitimate and his well-earned profit.
 Besides these institutions race-track gambling has but limited and mar rowly circumscribed sphere of iatlu- ence; it is as the molehili to the mountain.
 But the country has not lost hope. The day of reckoning is surely con- ing. and if the lawmakers of today