The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-05


 stock issues, hence no urgent inside need of more conversions.
 A successful trading element has grown up in Wall street whose importance and strength has not yet been appreciated at its true value There are hundreds and thousands of men who have operated in stocks for years with almost uniform suc- cess, some of them on a large scale They have made a business of specula- tion, just as men make a business of any other speciality.
 They have studied the game and find it as safe as merchandising or manufac- turing. They buy when things are cheap and sell when they are dear. This Is a re- versal of the common practice of specu- lators on the stock exchange, the cotton exchange or the Chicago board of trade where 1t seems to be a struggle on the part of the great multitude of unsophis- ticated players to buy at the top and sell at the bottom.
 The prolongation of the Pressed Car Steel strike at McKee's Rocks arouses a good deal of irritation in that division of Wall street population interested In in dustriajs There has been a growing dis position to criticise the manner in which the oompany's end of the strike difficulty has been managed by F. N. Hoffstot and "Jim'' Frend, president and vice-presi- dent respectively. They find themselves the centre of unpleasant notoriety and their records are being hauled over.
 It Is recalled by former Pittsburgers now in New York that Hoffstot and Frend bought s600000 worth of experience a few years ago from Cassie Chadwick. Cassie convinced them that by letting her have that amount she would make them S2OOO,O00 They have the best of it that. Cassie Is dead Hoffstot. by the way, has stopped work on palace he Is build ing up on the northern shores of Long Island.
 What is especially annoying to some of the important stockholders in Pressed Steel Car is that a rival concern organ ized a few years ago by Diamond Jim" Brady, formerly with the company in leading capacity, is benefitting enormous ly by the shutdown caused by the strike.
 Among very wide-awake and influ- ential contingent of newspapers and newspaper men the philosophy prevails that whenever a man of large affairs about whose doings there happens to be acute public interest surrounds himself with mystery and denies to the press in- formation to which 1t feels itself entitled, they have a perfect right to guess and to speculate much as they want to. There Is a shade of excuse for that at- titude.
 A big man rarely gets into the lime light except of his own free will and volttion, and having taken that position he invest himself and his actions with a degree of public interest which he can- not consistently ignore. There has been lately conspicuous example of the evils likely to follow a mistaken idea that a very important parsonage can surround himself with an atmosphere of secrecy, and not have that attitude misconstrued and resented.
 Fortunately. in this case, the mistake was recognized by the principal and cor rected by him In spite of the obstinate objections of coterie of ill-advised guar dians of the sacred person. There is complaint, however, that the Arden bull letins do not come fast enough.
 It Is too bad that the late w c. An drews. well-known in Pittsburg and New York, Is not alive to know that inf1u- ential and enterprising people are resur- recting his pet hobby of manufacturing gas at the West Virginia coal mines and piping 1t to large seaboard cities of the east, notably Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. It was MT. Andrews convic- ton that fuel and light could be piped from the mines cheaper than it could be transported in the form of coal