Polk County news. [volume] (Benton, Tenn.) 191?-1983, 1921-01-13
EXCHANGES ARE CRITICIZED
President OF Farmers Union Calls
Stock And Farm Product ManIpU-
Iators Predatory Parasites"

lators Predatory Parasites"
Washington.-Charles A. Barrett
president Of the Farmers CO-Opera
tive and Educational Union, who is
chairman OF the national bureau OF
farm organizations, created a sensa-
ton by a stirring and intensely caus-
tic address at the hearing on the va
rious bills pending to abolish stock
and cotton exchanges. Among other
things, Mr.. Barrett said:
"The great staple crops Of this ma
tion are controlled by group of pred
tory gamblers who are mercilessly rob-
bling farmers and city people alike.
| am appearing before this committee
to urge congress to wipe out this great
evil.
Organized speculation is a polite
name for gambling. Gambling is mere
ly one form of stealing; therefore,
when we get down to brass tacks,
speculation is just plain every day
stealing.
Stealing is the acquiring Of your
neighbours property without giving any
return either in money, property or
service. Isn't that precisely what
speculation attempts to do, and sue
ceeds in doing on scale which
makes the professional gamblers and
thieves look like pikers?
THE world has long suffered from
the predatory parasites who call them
selves spectators, but it remained for
the nineteenth century to permit them
to organize themselves into powerful
exchanges so-called and properly so,
for they most successfully exchange
their paper contracts for the hard |
earned money of the general public |
1T does not matter whether it is |
cotton, or corn, or wheat, or oats, or |
pork, or coffee, or railroad and indus
trial stocks, the procedure is the |
same; the victims get paper contracts
from the members of the exchange
and the said members get the victims.
Gangs, operating in Chicago, plain
lively complain that the attacks now
being leVeled at the exchange are
all based on the grievous error that
gambling and speculation mean the
same thing.
"The silk-hatted, frock-coated para
sites have grown so powerful that they
are able to hire the shrewdest and
most able members of the Ananias
Club in the country to persuade the
people, and especially legislatures, that
black is white, that speculation is not
business-indeed, that with I
)ut it we would all go to the bow
vows. Their success has been remark ,
.ble, not surprisingly so, in view of 9
he number of fools in the world who 7
abor faithfully and endure hardships !
n order that parasites may live in 5
luxury and ease. !
LET us consider some of the facts 9
nd see if the obvious deduction can ,
ercolate into our brains: @
when a wheat crop of, say, $780, .
100000 bushels, is bought and sold \
n paper contracts of the Chicago r
ambling hell, fourteen times over be- q
ore bushel of the crop has moved |,
0 market, how in the name of COM .
ION sense can that help the wheat :,
rover? He has one bushel of wheat U
} sell. The organized gamblers Of
or to the public fourteen bushels.
nd these gentry have the nerve to ="
Xix about the law of supply and o
emand, at the very moment that for :"
fairly known demand they offer in :"
lie market place ten, twelve, four y
zen or twenty times the actual
mount of wheat in existence 3
Consider cotton: For forty years
otton was the backbone of our for
gn exports, and rendered priceless
,rvice to the country, being still a
emendous factor in that field
"In 1868 the New York cotton 'ex- ra
lange' establish the future board 1c
Id the gamblers of New York, New M
rleans and Liverpool took charge of tie
,tton. A careful study worked out ed
1906, showed that in the 3S years
ON 1868 to 1906, cotton gamblers dc
ID cost the cotton producers of the P;
,uth seven thousand millions of dol sn
rs" by