Evening star., 1909-04-25
RETAINING! HOLDINGS
DISPOSITION to Hold Stocks Sc
cret of Markets Backbone.
OPTIMISM Is SPREADING
Wall Street Nerves on Edge Over
Chicago Wheat.
COALERS LIVE WIRES" TODAY
Favorable Outlook of Anthracite
Situation Enlivens the Coal Stocks.
Hawley's C. and o. Plans.
COALERS LIVE WIRES" ToDA!
Special Correspondence Of The Star.

NEW YORK, April ~, 1909.
The game at times grows wearisome.
The stock market at the present time is
singularly deficient in important or sem
sational features, but it holds out a
promise of lively developments later on.
Price changes of late have not been sig
nificant, unless 1t can be said that the
absence of violence represents a tena-
cious unwillingness on the part of the
rank and file to let so their holdings.
Millions upon millions OF shares bought
at and near panic levels by hundreds o.
thousands of men and women are still
held intact.
At current quotations these purchases
show handsome profit, but there is no
disposition to convert any large amounts
of such low-bought securities into cash.
The holders evince no anxiety to change
front or shift position. In most cases.
particularly with railroads, the manage
ments have contrived to so reduce ex-
penses on a smaller volume of business
as to keep up dividends. The thought
is uppermost in the minds of holders:
What would we do with our money II
we should sell our stock? How and
where would we reinvest our capital and
get better returns?'
This is the primary thought deterrinS
liquidation and protit-taking.
1t constitutes the backbone of the mar
ket. 1t accounts also for the very limit
ed floating supply OF stocks in the street
and makes 1t easy for bob. tailed pools
to engineer deals and campaigns 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 suf-
fered more than in railroads. but every
body knows that manufacturing estab-
lishmentS run more distinctiyely to
streaks of lean and streaks of fat than
the railroads do. When the streaks are
lean, they are awfully lean, and when
they are fat. the returns are opulent.
Hence the indisposition to let go Of even
the things least attractive from surface
appearances.
Re-Established Prosperity.
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 prosperity.
This sounds like a story oft-told and
ng-delayed in realization. Yet now.
more than any time since the panic a
year and half ago, stalwart believers
are found and the foundations do ac-
tually appear to be stronger. A popula-
ton of S5,OOO,OOO 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 oversupply. Hence when the indus
tries start up there will be no competi-
ton from stocks of shopWorn goods.
In some divisions there has been a
piling up of raw material. notably In the
metals, but this may be only a wise pro-
vision against the emergency of quick
revival. Anyhow, things look brighter.
People who are not actually buying ad-
ditional stocks are at least refraining
from selling what thew have
The Chicago wheat corner got on the
nerves Of Wall street several days be-
fore the big trader quit. Mr.. Patten is
popularity supposed to have about all the
money In the world and the strongest of
alliances, but nevertheless a haunting
| theory existed that his corner wouldn't
win and that when the explosion oc-
CURED the disarranged fragments of the
out Of the debris. Wall street is per-
sonally interested in the corner only in
the minutest degree by direct participa-
tion. 1t is none the less true, however,
that Chicago collapse might kick up
a big commotion hereabouts. 1t is near
ly always found that a rotten spot de-
velops in the stock markets closely re-
lated to speculation in any other city.
New York and Chicago are in very in
innate touch. Heretofore. whenever one
of these bad things happened i'm Chicago,
the hurt has extended to Wall street
Somebody has had heavy and entangling
accounts to protect and stocks have 10
go over to bridge the emergency.
Public Sentiment in Speculation.
Public sentiment is a force not under
stood or reckoned with by the generality
| of spectators until they go up against it.
| Then they know. Especially do the cor
nerers or would-be cornerers of food
stuffs learn the lesson. but not until they
feel n feI
mulative popular hostility do they ap-
preciate the fact that it is a live and not
infreauently the discriminating element in
the equation. The speculator is not trou-
bled by the signing of the early zephyrs.
He Is rather pleased than otherwise at
the attentions he is receiving, the pictures
and sketches in the newspapers the no.
toriety achieved. Not so, however, when
the gentle breeze turns into roaring
tornado Of Indignation, accompanied by
half-page pictorial horrors of professions
of starving women and children crying
for the bread he has heartleSSly lifted be-
yond their reach. scathing editorials on
the brutality of forestaliing 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 de-
posits to spectators for nefarious gam
bling campaigns. conceived and carried on
for the oppression and robbery of this
same public.
b Bankers are as susceptible to popular
uprising as politicians. and at times quite
as timid. They have highly strung nerves
attuned to catch and understand the vi
brations of sentiment which may have a
bearing on their own affairs. They are
made uncomfortable by charges of collu-
sion with commercial immortality and
nervous by thoughts of unheralded visits
from bank examiners, as we'll as casual
attentions of half-baked persons infiamed
by excitement to destructive and homi-
cidal tendencies The spectators might
stand the racket, but they never be
quite sure how the disturbance is going to
without whose help the strongest manipu-
lators are powerless to put deal through
to the scheduled finish.
Every man who has put through sue
cessful deals in commodities (and there
are such) and the many more who have
failed in the effort have testimony on this
phase Of their experience. Even the late
'PhiF' Armour, he of the rhinoceros COW
ering. felt the crushing force of popular
hostility and shrank from it at times In
the heat of battle they may resent and
upon them. Vociferous and persistent
ill-will eventually gets under the skin of
the most hardened among the players,
and the big trust builders, as proved by
their eleventh-hour efforts to win back
the good opinion of their fellow-men.
Former Wheat Corners.
The statement that no one has ever run
a successful corner in wheat on the Chi
cago Board of Trade is incorrect P. d.
Armour put one across in 1881. Truman