The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-09-06
NICHOLAS WALL
 STREET LETTER The Street Has Been Landed
 With the Goods PRICES ON HIGH LEVEL Professionals Seem to Be Carrying the Big Load, Expecting the Public
 to Relieve Them After
 Mir. Taft's Election.
PRICES ON HIGH LEVEL
By W. 0. NICHOLAS.

I Wall street has been landed with tho | goods this time, sure enough There has
 probably not been a time in years when ownership of such a large volume of stocks and bonds rested in the financial
 district of New York as now. Nearly | $400 000, GOO more money is loaned by the
 banks and trust companies on stock
 exchange collateral than four or five
 months ago. Commission houses in four
 cases out of five will say that they are ] carrying a less amount than usual. The l deduction is therefore plain that the hold 1 CTS must be doing business direct with | the lenders To be able to do this i'm plies vast wealth and financial responsi- | bilty and also actual personal command of the money. In other words, the stocks
 are held by groups or syndicates of very , wealthy men-the men who have beep | behind the great bull campaign in ths | stock market since the upturn began four
 months ago. The popular supposition | that the stocks have been distributed by l the pools and syndicates but the bank
 situation does not verify this theory. On ! the contrary, directly the reverse is shown 1 to be the case.
 1 It seems to be clear that the market managers nave Deen dQulnB tO lLSlr uolu- 1 ings on the way up instead of reducing
 them. Being in absolute control of the
 money market they had no trouble about | funds to back the stupendous manipula- ! ton. By open and concerted discrimina- l tion against mercantile and industrial pa-
 per they have increased the funds avail ] able for stock speculation and put the i call rate down to 1 per cent. For the 1 last three months they have been able to | n10 fhav wanted I
 to 1h per cent while merchants and manu- 1 facturers find 1t hard work to get even as much as extensions on outstanding paper much less any increase in accom-
 modations. The rule has been that they
 could find no new money at per cent
 and an expression of willingness to pay
 more than that rate stamped the appli- | cant as unsafe. Quotations on money have been very much lower than 6 per | cent for time money, but only the fav- | ored ones were able to get the cash
 or credit at any price. The low call
 rate has enabled the speculative pools ] to make good fat scalp on their in- vestments tn dividend paying stocks and
 current quotations show a large aver
 age paper profit on stocks bought through | the campaign When the work of un- I loading begins there will be wide
 margin to plough through before the | average cost price is reached.
 Just where and how market Is to be l found for the enormous mass of specu-
 lative stocks now being carried for the
 pools and syndicates by the New York l banks and trust companies does not ap- 1 pear to give the manipulators the slight | est concern. Admittedly, the public Is | not in the market to anywhere near the
 extent claimed a few weeks ago and if l commission houses and brokers had to m cfn Oat oi1f- 1 side clients half of them would starve to | death. There Is no diminution in the con- ] idence felt by Wall street in the cleo ton of MT. Taft and in the faith that after such election there will be a grand popular demonstration in the stock mar
 ket which will give the giant stock gamblers chance to unload and get away with their profits. The result in Vermont gives the market general in- creased assurance that they have been rigr. In their political forecasts and that everything Is going well. Thus far there
 has been slight indication of Bryan
 scare and it may be that the market will work through the entire campaign without such a demonstration. In many well informed quarters the opinion is held that prices are going to be well main- tained and even advanced somewhat above current levels until November. That was the tip given out month ndRO ana the market record since bears out the prophecy down to date.
 Nobody yet disputes the responsibility of leadership of the great bull campaign in stocks. Everybody comedies that honor to MT. Hartman in association with the Standard oil forces, Kuhn, Loeb & Company and H. c. Prick Except Tn Steel the great house of J. P. Morgan & Company seems to have played second fiddle to the Harriman-Standard Oil az , gregation. The Morgan outfit has been , very energetic in pulling Steel issues, and sporadically one or two other Morgan specalties. MT. Morgan has returned to
 the scene of action, having tired of Flu
 rope and European travel for the sea-
 son.
 Whether he will lend his influence to a
 further advance in prices remains to be
 seen. The eminent financer is a hard
 headed old party and may conclude that
 prospective prosperity has been dis
 counted enough In the prices that have
 already been made. Certain Y is that
 the business improvement upon which
 the campaign was originally predicated
 has been disappointing. With two
 months more of the presidential cam
 paign ahead of us and then certainty
 of tariff revision depending in degree upon
 the November result the conservative
 element is raising its voice in protest against further ballooning of quotations
 anu IL iS beii oiy pOSSlDio lIldt llQulQd- ton and distribution of the colossal spec Vative holdings now vested in Wall street may be started ahead of schedule time.
 The outside public is already taking advantage of the big advance to let go of its stocks in greater or less amounts and If the volume of offerings from that
 source gets much larger the great gamb- lers may be obliged to seek safety In retreat. There Is limit even to their ability to float a stocky gambling cam paign. The mere fact that the banks ara now lending more money on stocks than
 would have bought the stocks outright last winter is in itself fact to command the attention of the responsible heads of
 these institutions and possibly to compel
 a halt and a calling In of loans. In at
 least one instance willy insiders of the
 Standard oil persuasion have been able
 to work out of large quantities of stock.
 On a fagrantly manipulated movement
 in Shelters the Standard Oil crowd de-
 coyed the public into the game and landed
 1t with hundreds of thousands of shares at high f1gures-stock that was taken
 over under compulsion during the panic
 season of last fall and winter. This Shelters deal Is supposed to have been in charge of the pious John D. Rocke- feller, Jr. If he really had the handling of 1t he shows that he has learned some thing by experience. Better work was done in this later Shelters move than in the celebrated Leather deal engineered by young Rockefeller to his discomfort ture and loss some years ago. That, how~ ever, was his maiden effort.