Evening star., 1923-07-23
Curb Market Gaze Bucketeers
Easiest Path to Exploit Public
Stocks of Limited Distribution Enable
Pools to Hoist Prices Far AbOre
actual Values.

soon afterward by heavy transactions
at almost double par. The company's
own balance sheets of the few fol-
! lowing years show clearly enough
how much water was in the capital
ization at the start, on the basis of
the meager properties with which the
company began operations--a very
! different sort of Midvale. incidentally,
from the one which was TO be de-
veloped on the company's acquisition
long afterward of the Cambria Steel
Company following further financing.
Many Stocks FIOated.
1t is hardly necessary TO set forth
here the details regarding the stream
! of similar stock fiotations which fol-
lowed, with leading banking interests
of the country actively identified with
the inflated securities. The story of
| these inffations has been presented
time and again in the public press.
They continued to make their appear
ance, not only through the period of
the war shares boom in 19l5-19l6.
but many more made their debut at
various intervals over the course Of
the four succeeding years-whenever
| the public showed much appetite for
| speculative stocks.
Because of the respected sponsor
ship for these stocks. the public
| grabbed them all the more readily.
The Curb bucketeers. thoroughly alive
| to the imitation. and receiving nearly
all the buying orders for these shares.
other than those which were being
placed through New York Stock Ex-
| change houses. did all they could to
encourage the buying movement.
with regard to the imitation. they
showed little hesitancy in bucketing
| these orders. They went further and
boosted" the stocks to the skies in
their advertising, market letters and
correspondence with customers.
Drew New Customers.
The boosting of such stocks.
sponsored as they were by such noted
! interests, gave to this literature Of
/ the bucketeers an air Of respecta-
bility such as could not have been
| expected in the erstwhile boosting"
! of penny mining stocks. Also, with
| literature and their advertising as is
| the case with houses which are mem
| bers OF the New York Stock Ex-
| change and which must abide by the
( ideas of the exchange governing such
| matters. the bucket shops We're en-
abled to place a glamour on their rec
| concentrations on stocks which be-
| gan to bring to them and to Curb
| stocks many people who previously
had been dealing almost wholly in
| New York Stock Exchange securities
and through New York Stock Ex-
| change houses.
AS matter of fact. there was
really being laid at that time the
| foundation for the developments
within a few years whereby many OF
| the bucket shops were to enlarge their
activities and enter into competition
! with houses that We're members of
the New York Stock Exchange in
soliciting orders for securities listed
! on that exchange.
! The amounts of money which these
| new customers were to bring the
! bucket shops were, of course, much
| beyond what the commitments of the
average buyer of the penny mining
1 stocks had been able to make. Many
| of the bucket shops continued to treat
| this money almost wholly s capital"
The collapse of the inflated industrial
stocks therefore meant to the bucket
| ing gentry profits far beyond what
they had been gathering on their
/ early efforts in the bucketing of min
| ing shares.
| Some of these houses now grew to
wealth far beyond what the bucket
known, and with this wealth came
| growth in power The example of
the powerful banking interests in
wildly manipulating Curb securities
ters. The bucketeers all the more
| readily bucketed the incoming buy
I ing orders for the offerings of these
latter promoters and, naturally, gath
cred even easier prontS on Such trans
actions.
It can, hardly be believed that the
| big banking interests referred to
| failed to see at that time the evils
| which the bucket shop evil was as
| suming. But they themselves were
| living in glass houses 1t was no time,
apparently. they deemed. for them to
| awaken storms of public criticism.
For them to have drawn attention
; to the manner in which the bucket
| ing evil was developing. to have
drawn attention to the moneys of
which the bucket shops were fllching
| the public, would have been almost
| certain to have attracted too much at
tention to the manipulation of those
! stocks on which they themselves
\ were profiting and which were af-
fording the field day for the bucket
GERS.
! And so the Curb bucket shops grew
| in profits and in power. But while
they were unmolested by certain
l members of the financial community,
/ who should reasonably have been ex-
pected to do something to guard the
! public against the bucketing depreda-
| tions, an entirely different agency
was to develop and to work havoc in
| make big dents in their ill-gotten
mainly of a gang of supercrooks. who
| carried to a rather high state of per-
| fection an art of mulcting the bucket
| shops themselves. How these crooks
operated Will be told in the next ar
ticle of this series.
Copyright. 1923, by New Commercially