Bisbee daily review., 1908-02-06
STOCK GAMBLING.

THE BISBEE DAILY REVIEW. STOCK GAMBLING.
 Tao St. Louis Republic thus com ments on the recent message of Pres ident Roosevelt:
 President RooseveIt's discovery of the moralities is doubtless very in teresting thing to him, but it scarcely justifes a communication to congress And yet this is almost all the mes sage transmitted to capitol Friday contains.
 Alike in substance and in form, the missive from the white house sug gests a sermon rather than a docu- ment referring to public business It can be sJustifably questioned whether it is in any degree beneficial to the counry for the president to indulge in general morslizing about delin- quencies which cannot be made the object of national legislation, since the evils he denounces are already recognized by everybody and defend ed by no one. It certainly can serve no good purpose for the chief execu- tive of the nation to appear as com mon scoid.
 -Of course, it is true that there is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock mar ket, but we don't need a presidential message to give us knowledge of that fact in morality. There would be ade- quate motive for a message if it com tained definite recommendation as to method within the constitutional province cfs congress by which fedeS- al authority can be employed to put a stop to gambling in the stock mar ket. but notwithstanding MT, Roose- welt squints at a specific recemmen- dalton he betrays his own lack of be lief in the remedy suggested
 ~There is something less than the whole truth in the admission that there is special difficulty in dealing with ttiss matter by the federal gov ernmeut in a federal republic like ours. for the whole truth requires the candid admission that it is subject clearly reserved to the states indiyid- ualIy under the constitution The president characteristically hints that the national government can acquire jurisdiction by censorship of the mails and the telegraph But he doesn2 put the thought forward in a way to indicate it is at all settled conviction in his own mind.
 Some recognition that not all trad ing in stocks and bonds is immoral is manifested in the message. since .Mr. Roosevelt comedies that the great bulk of the business transacted on inc exchange is not only legitimate, hut Is necessary to the working of our modern industrial system The i'm moral trading is defined as the mak- ing of large sales of what men do net possess and ~cornering the market Ia the same category are placed -pur- cAases of stocks or other commodi- ties on a margin for speculative and gambling purposes-' But the presi- dent knows fuIl well that buying on margins means only that the buyer borrows part of the money required to make a purchase and that this is an everyday incident of business in eII Haes of trade.
 ANe one will seriously anticipate for a single moment that congress will attempt to legislate against stock gambling by directing a supervision Of orders given by mail or wire. Why, then. should the peace and confidence the country is fest recovering be in terrupted by purposeIess phiIippic? The answer probably is that Presi- dent Roosevelt felt compelled to re Iieve Theodore Roosevelt of the od- ium attached to what some people were unknd enough to term 'Roose welt panic Now that the defense is on file the whole matter will be dis missed by congress and the people That will leave the repression of stock gambling just where 1t belongs, vita the states"