Evening star., 1920-04-05
MARKET INTEREST
IN SENATE ACTION
BY STUART T.. WEST.

WALL. STREET, NEW YORK. April
5.-The only important piece of news
e~es. the three-tlay holiday as it ap-
pehred to the wall stree. community
this morning was the passase by tho
ssnhts of The bill giving larger pow
rrs OF discrimination to the Federal
reserve board IN the matter of az
ranging discounts with individual
banks.
Tho acknowledged uurpo-r OF This
'zislatier in to enable the federal
reserve authorities TO get ate" In
rt'tut!ens that are borrowing too
mitch without penaliz'ns the member
hanleH a. n whole,
htle this has a favorable sig
ntfcance. as indicating the intention
Or the federal reserve officials not 10
Increase the present scale Of discount
rates any further, Tie pntn. chiefly
made this iH"; a!ng was TINT the
screws would be but upon Individual
proper efforts 10 cut down their loans
ana that this might mean some fur
ther disturbance In Wall street
credits,
Exploited by Bears.
The bear crowd did their utmost to
exploit this possibility. They were
helped by two other incidents Of the
day. The first and less important Of
these was the reported intention of the
French to extend their area OF cccu-
patton In Germany. This was Of con-
sequence only in q sentimental way.
The second and more important was the
renewal Of that same pressure of for
e,gn liquidation, which had borne SO
heavily against last weeks market par
|ticularly against the international rail-
way list All the stocks in which Lon
\ i,o-0 rad al lna
stocks which go TO make up the col
lateral for the AngloFrench loan. were
definitely and persistently weak
Stocks like Union Pacific. Southern
Pacific, New York Central. Great
Northern preferred and Northern Pa
they have reached since the culmina- =
ton of the big decline Of the market
in February. While the advance in
sterling across the 81 Level was one
of the stimulating features of the
day the fact that il was accomplished
quite as much by the foreign selling
in the security market as by the
transfers of gold served to more than
counteract any good effect it might
have had upon the stock list.
Rail shares Not in Rally.
Railway shares did not rally with
other groups when the market turned
upward after the first hour. The bear
efforts to arouse uneasineSS on the
subject of possible further restrictive
action by the Federal Reserve Board
were only temporarily successful be-
cause they We're neutraliZed by the
course of the days money market.
Following the further improvement
shown Saturday in the position of the
federal reserve banks. and rejecting
also the return of the April dividend
funds. the renewal rate on call loans
was reduced to I per cent. and new
money was obtainable freely offered
al 6.
With the call money market thus
back to normal. with A supply well
ahead of demand on the floor of the
stock exchange. ii was necessarily
difficult to work up much of scare
over the credit situation and what
the federal reserve authorities might
or might not do.
The publication of the reduced
money rates soon after IL O'Clock
was the signal for the early bear
raiders to buy back their stocks, and
it took less than an hour for the in
dustrial division of the market to re-
gain practically all of its previous
loss.