The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-25
NO PLACE ID PUT BOARDED MONEY This Keeps Many From Selling
 Holdings PAT TEN'S WHEAT CORNER Nicholas Tells of Chicago Men Who Have Heretofore Engineered
 Successful Corners
 In Grain.
PA1TEN'S WHEAT CORNER
By w. c. NICHOLAS.

changes of late have not been significant unless 1t can be said that the absence of violence represents a tenacious unwill- ingness on the part Of the rank and file to let go their holdings. Millions upon millions of shares bought at and near panic levels by hundreds of thous- ands of men and women are still held intact. At current quotations these pur- chases show a handsome profit, but there Is no disposition to convert any large amounts of such low bought securities into cash. The holders evince no anxiety 10 change front or shift position. In most cases, particularly with railroads, the managements have eontrived to so reduce expenses on a smaller volume of busI- ness as to keep up dividends. The thought is uppermost in the minds of holders: What would We do with our money If we should sell our stock? How and where would we reinvest our capital and get better returns?" This is the primary thought deterring liquidation and profit taking. It constitutes the backbone of the market It accounts also for the very limited floating supply of stocks in the street and makes it easy for bob tailed pools to engineer deals and cam paigns in this, that and the other stock. With many of the industrials the sit uation has been somewhat different. In that department net earnings have sui fered more than in railroads but every body knows that manufacturing estab- lishments run more distinctively to streaks of lean and streaKs of fat than iA4a ba lean, they are awfully Jean, and when they are fat, the returns are opulent. Hence the indspostion to let go of even the things least attractive from surface appearances.
 The change which is promised and which really seems to be in store is that better times are soon to appear and that everything will go whooping along in the direction of re-established pros perity. This sounds like a story oft told, and long delayed in realization, Yet now, more than any time since the panic year and a half ago, stalwart believers are found and the foundations do actu- ally appear to be stronger. A -popula- tion of S5,OOO,000 people have eaten up and worn out the contents of the store houses and in manufactured articles there Is no heavy surplus to be found-no over supply. Hence when the industries start
 
 stocks of shop worn goods. In some di- visions there has been a piliNg up of raw material, notably in the metals, but this may be only wise provision against the emergency of quick revival. Anyhow things look brighter. People who are not actually buying additional stock are at least refraining from selling what they have.
 The Chicago wheat corner has gotten on the nerves of Wal lstreet. MT Pat ten is popularly supposed to have about all the money in the world and the strongest of alliances, but nevertheless haunting theory exists that his cor ner won't win and that when the ex- plosion occurs the disarranged frag- ments of the big speculator will remain to be fiished out of the debris. Wall street is personally interested in the corner only in the minutest degree by direct participation. It is none the less true, however, that the Chicago col lapse might kick up big commotion hereabouts. It Is nearly always found that rotten spot develops In the stock market closely related to speculation in any other city. New York and Chica- go are in very intimate touch. Here tofore whenever one of these bad things happened in Chicago the hurt has extended to Wall street. Somebody has had heavy and entangling accounts to protect and stocks have to go over to bridge the emergency. In this event there may be no Chicago catastrophes as MT. Patten Is admittedly we'll equipped by experience and resources to engineer his campaign to a tri- sumphant finish. For one thing, he has been in the cash grain business all his life and is not afraid of contact with the real substance, something which few men could say who have gone gaily forth to run corners on the Chicago board of trade.
 Public sentiment is a force not un- derstood or reckoned with by the gen. erality of spectators until they go up against it. Then they know, Especially do the cornerers, or would be cornerers of food stuffs learn the lesson, but not until they feel the pressure of concen- trated and cumulative popular hostili- ty, do they appreciate the fact that 1t is live and not infreQuently the de- termining element in the equation. The speculator is not troubled by the sigh ing of the early zephyrs. He is rather pleased than oth erWise at the atten- tions he is receiving, the pictures and sketches in the newspapers, the noto- riety achieved. Not so, however, when the gentle breeze truns into a roaring tornado of indignation, accompanied by
  sions of starving women and children crying for the bread he has heartlessly lifted beyond their reach, scathing edi- torials on the brutality of forestalling the markets for the necessities of life, sermons on the sins of gambling and the general wretchedness of the whole proceeding, and last, but not least, the angry demands that bankers cease lending the public's deposits to specu- lators for nefarious gambling cam paingns, conceived and carried on for the oppression and robbery of this same public. Bankers are as susceptible to popular uprising as politicians, and at times quite as timid. They have high understand the vibrations of sentiment which may have a bearing on their own affairs. They are made uncomfortable by charges of collusion with commer- cial immortality and nervous by thoughts of unheralded visits from bank examiners, as well as casual at tentions of half-baked persons infamed by excitement to destructive and homl- cidal tendencies The speculators might stand the racket but they can never be quite sure how the disturb ance is going to affect others, especially their bankers, without whose help the strongest manipuiators are powerless to put deal through to the scheduled finish.
 Every man who has put through suc- cessful deals in commodities (and there are such), and the many more who have a- T. L. xxxkt x1-4