The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1908-06-03

for the big bucketshop concerns to
maintain exchanges" where hired
Iemp.oyes of the concern pretend to
be brokers, buying and selling
with an exact imitation of every
small detail of trading on the legiti-
mate exchanges. 11at is why they
ARE dangerous Odell & Company
had such an exchange so did the
EIdwards-Wpo concern. This COM
'pany was back of the Superior Grain
Exchange" All the quotations were
stolen from the Chicago Board of
Trade, by means of wire tapping,
Ithree-eighths or one-fourth of cent
added to them and sent out as quo
tations of the Superior Grain Ex-
,change. In this manner firms
against whom the Chicago Board of
Trade had secured injunctions re-
straining them from using their quo
tations, were able TO evade the law
and secure the coveted figures. For
the things absolutely necessary TO the
bucklatshop are quotations. They
put them to the uses of the roulette
wheel, the faro layout, or poker chips.
ITt is impossible for the bucketshops
TO secure those market prices from a
Legitimate board of trade, 30 they
are compelled to steal them by hir-
ding thieves 10 tap wires. or fake
them up in some way. The instant
there are no Quotations to write on
the blackboards, the betting must
cease.
The bucketshop buys or sells I'm
differently, always at the price ap-
pearing for the time being on the
blackboard. For example, if Gus
toner buys" 1000 bushels of May
whelt, he puts up a margin based on
the last quotation. If this was one
dollar per bushel, he would put up
ten dollars, or one cent per bushel,
in order to make the deal He has
bought no real wheat or stock: he
has made bet. The shop has no
interest in this, except to check the
ten dollars up to their profit when
the sucker gets skinned. If wheat
goes down" three-quarters OF q cent,
the margin IS wiped out, for the
bucketshop charges one-fourth of a
cent commission " On the other
hand, If wheat should advance one
cent Per bushel, the customer would
make only three-fourths of cent
the other one-fourth going to the
sham "broker." Wheat has to adj
vance cent and a quarter before
the customer can make a cent prof
It; while on the other hand, IL It
drops only three-quarters OF a cent
his ten dollars are lost. It Is one of
the sure thing games. The buck
etshoppers act as principal and ag
ent, and charge commission" and
! Interest on investments that are
never made. More often than not
the concerns cody pocket all the
money without ever making a trade.
The public's losses are the bucket
shops profit. and an idea of the tre-
mendous amount of money cleaned
up by the bucketshops Is gained by
this story When William ]. Odell
& died-he who was the promoter of
the Odell Commission Company, Of
Cincinnati-he left a will turning ov-
en- to three trusted employees the bug
, iness he had built up, with the stip-
ulation that when they had made
100000 each they should turn the
business over to the three employees
next in line. Eight months later the
three retired in favor OF the other
employees. and it Is claimed that dur
ing those eight months they made
over a million dollars apiece out of
the concern. Odell. himself. when he
died was worth more than $4,000, 900.
! The United States postal authbri-
ties have waged relentless warfare
against the bucketshops since 1896,
when fraud orders were issued by the
government against some fifty firms.
The government fight against fake
financiers has been kept up, and at
the present time. when they are maxi
ing ii their business to crush the Ed
wards-Wood company. The govern
ment authorities have always been
badly handicapped by the lack of a
! law under which they can properly
punish the offenders. The most they
can do is to haul them up for using
the mails to defraud, and under this
, law, the punishment by no means
fits the crime.
The fight of the Chicago Board OF
Trade against counterfeiters has been
"a spectacular one; II has taken years
/ of effort and hundreds of thousands
lof dollars. but the counterfeit was
confused with genuine business Us
iually the victim of the bucketshops
/ set up a howl of protest against the
board of trades because that saved
him from ridicule as a fool. The
banker who goes wrong and en-
bezzlss funds that have been In
trusted to him blames a "board of
| trade. \ case of this description
was traced and II was discovered
that the 800 900 the banker had stol-
en- had been lost in a bucketshop
Hammond, Indiana, which had been
driven out of Chicago by the Board
iof Trade. Yet he declared he had
lost the money "on the bbard OF