The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-31
BULLS CLAIM GOLD
 HURT COTTON CROP
Bulls Are Willing for Bear
 Inning
TO WATCH SPOT COTTON
Telegrams From Interior Expected to Flood the Market With News of Damage From Cold, Which
 Bears Will Onset

l New Orleans, October 30.--This week the
 cotton market will probably be very much of a professional affair. Bearish inter-
 ests last week secured a good hold on
 the situation and succeeded not only in
 forcing prices to decline in the face of strongly bullish development, but also created no small amount of bearish sem timent among the rank and file of room traders, ring scalpers and the semi-pro-
 fessional following of the market. It will
 probably be the aim of the bears this
 week to increase this sentiment by the
 use of large crop estimates and the dis tribution of crop accounts intended to
 show that the crop was made before the cold weather came along.
 It Is hardly to be expected that the
 bears will be able to carry their cam paign to any great lengths without op- position from the bull clique which still
 maintains It's organization, but is, to all appearances, willing that the bears should have an inning. Now there are two reasons advanced by the bulls why
 the bears should be allowed to have
 their way. One is that the bears are
 bringing about better purchasing levels upon which to base a new campaign for a rise and another is that the enormous selling that has been going on is caus- Ing the market to become oversod and an oyersold market is the best founda- tion for an advance. The question that the average operator will have to guess appears tosbe how far the bulls will allow the bears to depress the market before showing fight. Once the bulls are deter- mined to check the decline there will be heavy trading and nervous fluctuations. Whether the bulls can rout the bears as they have for over a year past remains to be seen; the bulls claim that they have the advantage because of the strength of the statistical position of cotton.
 One feature of the situation that will be watched very carefully by both sides is the attitude of the owners of spot cotton. Bulls claimed at the end of last week that farmers and others in the in- terior who own spots were paying not the slightest attention to the fluctuations in the future market, and were not mar keting cotton at all on the decline. This week any heavy offerings at any point in the cotton belt will be heralded far and wide over the cotton world and will be the signal for further breaks in the fu- ture market. Should the holders of spots
 remain firm their attitude will cause much comment and will lead to invest ment buying on breaks in the future mar ket and to buying of futures by mills
 against their needs in raw material
 Should manipulation of futures cease, the course of prices would be guided almost entirely by the situation in the interior spot centers.
 Conservative traders this week will scan the news from the commercial cen ters of the world carefully for reports of further increase in the demand for fip- ished goods. .-44 .l.4~ ~. ;
 In not few sections of the dry goods market the bulls have been finding en- couragement and outside buying for long account would be stimulated by brisk all-round demand for cotton goodss. During the first of the week the mar ket will be deluged with telegrams from the interior telling of damage by cold. If the market of the last week is anything to go by, the bears will use manipula- tion to offset the effect of these mes- sages.