The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-05

 percentage for the risk they have taken l in the speculative features of the extra ordinary development.
 That they should have availed them selves of the personality and genius of Lawson in the marketing of a part of the capitalization Is a stroke of business. He commanded a convenient sales machinery and apparently has done the work for which he was enlisted. The probability is that the public which took over the goods will fare better than in nine-tenths of the fotatons carried out under the auspices of the stock exchange
 If the stock exchange could have pock- eted the commissions resulting from the Yukon fiotatlon it's moral sense would not have been in the least irritated or in- famed The rake-off having gone outside a elamorous roar of outraged sensitive ness goes up. A moral sense that can stand without rebellion such outrages on decencies as Sugar Amalgamated Cop per Tobacco and other Jlind pool things is not in a position to revolt on Au- kons and kindred projections launched through independent channels. Come of
 big thick blanket of disappointment settled upon the market when it daWned on the crowd that the bull movement In Union Pacific had been organized to help along another huge bond flotation instead
 
 pendous assets that Mir Hartman mas accumulated for the acquisition of other railroad and trolley systems and TOT lhe better rigging of the stock market
 What Nr. Hartman gets he keeps II he can and whatever distrioutlon may punetuate his iourneyings are TOT tue pai- pose of getting hold of more money-Ihsg are advertisements, so to speak. cara sbarns understand the philosophy Of let ting victims win an occasional pot to keeo~<efn sood-natured. and in a mood to submit to additional separation lrohi their coin.
 1T wouldn't like to express an opinion m the market" said the venerable put o1wavs alert "Deacon" White, because if I did somebody might think kne" something about 1t when as matlel of fact I know nothing And yet tns good "Deacon" knows more about the stock market than 99 per cent of the Wall street population. The trouple iS he has grown modest in his old age.
 rha +rouh1es of Erie (and of South ern railway in the background were ,mportant incidents of the week. South- ern railway has not been mueh oi3- cnssed but it Is really in a very much worse condition than Erie, althoush u has no urgent necessities to meet FITS on the contrary Is up against the heeo of provtding for $5,5O0000 due on the Stb of the month of April and of tax ing care Of various annoying lncloeh- tals.
 It Is made expensive for rallroaos U. doubtful standing to get money aae fine ease of Erie is signally illustra- tive of this situation. Erie Is right on inc verge of becoming one of the great railway systems of the country. For five years 1t has been putting large sums of money into reconstruction, and today it is in splendid physical eondi- tion excepting at the extreme eastern end, where sSo00.0oO or s4'ooo,ooo VIII be needed to put the Jersey City ter minals in good shape.
 When this is done, Erie will be where Baltimore and Ohio was when the com mon stock was S10 a share, at whlch 1schyological moment Jim" Hill, N. B. Ream. Marshall Field and their asso- ciates took hold of the property and put common Baltimore and Ohio to lls. Erie is one of the coming good things in the stock market, and no matter what it's temporary embarrassment may be it is bound to go to the front
 The Honorable Jefferson M. Levy thinks that one of the handicaps on prosperity Is in the license of specula tors to sell stocks they do not own. He is strongly in favor of laws modelled after those of France and Germany, which compel everybody who sells shares to prove ownership before mak- ing the sale. He says that those laws work most effcaciously across the wa ter and that they should be passed ano put in force in America.