The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-04-16
A Tornado Strikes the Wheat Fit. .PYRAmAL" FORTUNES
 VANISH IN \ TRIG Nothing Bit a Flurry, Says James
 \. Patten, It Was Patten Against the Fieis. and tAe Final Gs.s showed That sAe Former Was ss
 Mighty d
 Ever.

Chicago. April 1B.--It was a day of tumultA and sharply shifting fortunes in the wheat pit of the Board of Trade today.
 July wheat following . dcciie ad- vance to . new high level. suddenly, "pyramidal" fortunes of smaIi specu- lators vanished in a tries and the day was saved from .rout only by the viz. orous exertfons of the bull leader. James A. Patton. within the last fif- teen minutes of trading Mir. Patten bought 100000 bushels of wheat for July delivery. The while he chewed the stub of cigar and ran his finger refectfvely through the unshaven gray stubble for which this had been no time for him to remove from his face. carnation adorned his coat lapel. but there vas layer of Chicago dust on his coat and hat. ssssaea-
 "Nothing but a nurry.- he said. but that was after the turbulent pit had been deserted for the day. During that hnal quarter of an hour he was very busy man. z
 Into the corridor of the Western Union building in which the Bartlett Patten offices are. to be found hoated the sound of high-pitched. nervous voices as clerks at the telephone shot In buying orders to other clerks in the pit.
 Buy fifty. Buy hundred. Buy twenty-five"
 These numbers referred to thousands of bushels of wheat and there were many smaller ones--so many In fact that not all of them we're filled. It was physical impossfbility to do so. Mir. Patton personally visited the floor of the exchange and directed his own deals by word of mouth.
 It was Patten against the field and the final gong showed that the former apparently was as mighty as ever. His purchases and those of his followers together with the profit taking of. shorts. who lost no time In securing the fruits Of their bearish darins, caused . reaction of over q cent all along the line. But before this occurred. the. hoard of many . small spscuiatof had gone:
 Far from the nnaddenins strifs os, the board. in hundreds of bakeries there was q different although related scene. Flour had risen and the bakers with corrugated brows were trying to find out where their profits were coming from unless the price of bread scouId be advanced.
 According to one of the largest bak- CTS in the city, the price of flour has doubled in the last six years: lard has done likewise; milk has advanced aS i-s < per cent: delivery charges have dou- Abled and yet the price of bread re- mains the same. Three years ago when -four prices were on a rampage. many bakers saved their profits by reducing the weight of their loaves and the uual- ity of flower used. But 1t is said there is no further extreme of economy to which they can go, and meanwhile they allege their net earnings are nil So far. however. no concerted action has been taken with regard to the situa- tion.
 The speculative day on the board opened without indications of the sem < sation to come. May and July quietly rose to new prices. the former to s1. 29 1-4 and the latter to S1.1s 7-8. The July price was the highest since 1877 when European war exhausted reserves but neither mark created un- usual comment. Either one or the oth- CT of the options mentioned has been doing the same thing since the first of the month. There has not been trad ing day since then that one or the other has not created new top price.
 Bought ana solA
 Patten bought and sold as usual, mostly buying July and selling May. He is said to have disposed Of I,000, 900 bushels of his May holdings today and to be practically out of the option. Hts energies are now centered largely in July.
 "T stili have some May" said Mir. Patten. but I am chiefly interested now In July. I'm not paying much at- tention to the deferred futures. They are new crop months.
 It was fifteen or twenty minutes un- til closing time when the selling tor nado hit the pit. Stop loss orders came fin a deluge and the bears. stirred by 5-cent decline at Winnipeg based, it was said, on selling by exporters. at- tackled the market with great spirit. July tumbled half cent at time to 1i4I-4, an extreme loss of l3-s cents; May In larger jumps dropped to 126, and September. an undisputed new crop month. which had attained 10S 7-S, de- clined to 105 s-4. <
 Rere the Patten purchases made their influence felt and the close of the /, session found July at iik s-s@s-4; May at 137 1-2@5-S. and September at 106 1-4.
 In contrast to these prices. those of a year ago are of interest. During April year ago May wheat sold ct an average of 95 cents and July around S5 cents. The first sale of wheat for delivery in May of this year was made here, June 23rd last at ss- S-4 cents Whether it went to Patteh Is not of public record. but he was among the early purchasers. Since then the price has risen nearly 30 cents, This, how ever. does not serve to give line on the supposed profits of MT. Patten and his associates. No estimate worth con- sidering can be made, for@eyen were details of their operations known. 1t is safe to say the same capital has gone into the July deal. the outcome Of which, of course, cannot be pre- dicted.
 With the May deal proper to all in- tents a thing of the past. battle royal will be waged in July. Mir. Patten at the head of an influential following in- sists that July will be an old crop month; that is, -four muHt be made from the harvest of last year instead of the new wheat usually harvested in the winter belt in time for delivery on July contracts.
 Unusually unfavorable weather Nor planting last fall is given as the prin- cipal reason for this belief MT Pat ton said today that even if some of the wheat were harvested early in July, it win never reach Chicago. but will