Year: 1873

From the st. Louis Times, l9th.l


The recent failures were freely alluded


to on change yesterday, and the situa


ton generally was canvassed from a by
no means favorable standpoint. The
fact is, there has been a good deal o.
over-trading going on during the past
two or three months.


BUSINESS AND STOCKS-LEGITIAAT


AND u4LEGITTMATE PROFITS.


The excitement that existed in the
provision market some weeks ago has
passed away, and the effect of that ex-
element is just beginning to manifest
itself in certain quarters. The amount oil


business transacted at high price for
cash and forward delivery was immense,


in the aggregate, at that time, and large
quantities of mess pork We're sold for
June and July delivery at full prices


much of that sold for next month being
at nineteen dollars and a quarter. Clear
sides were also sold largely ahead at
eleven cents, and at eleven and one
fourth cents, and the time is approaching
| when these deliveries are to be made.


With mess pork selling for July delivery
now at sixteen dollars and seventy-five
cents and clear sides at nine and half
cents, the marginal differences are wide
as between values now and then, and
| the nearby fuCure does not seem to
promise much toward the recovery of
these differences. The stock of pork
and Of meats at the different points, as
sumes proportions considerably larger
than what no inconsiderable number of
spectators thought couple of months
| ago, or even less than that time, it would
| be. New York comes round and says
| that her stocks of the product will be
fully as large as they have been at this
period in former seasons, while Chicago
and Cincinnati hold liberal supply of
! both meats and pork. Of late, the specu-
lative demand for provisions has died
out, and the transactions from day to
| day are so beggarly that they hardly
| furnish quotations sufficient, based upon
actual sales, to establish a market. All
legitimate operators in provisions made
money, single firms counting up their
profits, when the season closed, in the
scale of one hundred thousand dollars
and far upward. But with their large
profits they were not entirely satisfied,
and, seized alike with others with the
speculative feeling, or mania, which pre-
vailed, they rushed in and bought reck-
lessly, so that with quite number the
large profits they had realized in Iegiti-
mate trading have materially dWindled
down, if they be not entirely swept
away.


LEssoN-OUR PRODUCTION OF PORK


NOT To BE DIMINISHED.


There is alesson to be learned from the
state of things through which the pro-
vision market in particular has passed,
which men in former years have been
slow to profit by, and which they seem
utterly unable to comprehend. They
fail to recognize the fact that, so far as
the quantity of pork this country is ca
pable of producing is concerned, it is
positively without limit; whereas
there is a limit to the consumptive de-
mand, and point beyond which it is
impossible to push fictitious values. The
business of slaughtering and curing the
pork products in summer is each year
being reduced to a scientific process, and
Increasingly the slaughter of hogs goes
on from the beginning to the close of the
year. There actually can be no def
cheney in the supply of meats in this
country, so long as corn grows and hogs
breed. If the corn crop fails, we can
raise potatoes, and the only possible de-
crease in the products must come from
some wide-spreading disease among the
hogs themselves. With the present faciI-
tiles for slaughtering and the cure Of
meats in summer, the supply of meats
cannot be kept at any fixed reduced
quantity, whereby spectators have it in
their power to control and regulate the
markets. The thing is out of the ques-
fiOns apH no cnOnor dOac on arfiaTo 0fI
pork command high and remunera-
tive price than packers turn their atten-
ton to it, and can, in comparatively
short time, supply the demand. The
summer packing, so far this season, has
exceeded anticipations, and has con-
tributed in no small degree in breaking
down values. There is no lack of an
abundant supply of provisions in any
quarter, and our surplus product to-day,
with what our packing-houses can place
OH the market within couple of months
or so, would supply half of Europe, even
if it were devastated by a famine, be-
sides leaving an ample supply to meet
all our home wants. We say, then, that
the embarrassments some of our provis-
ion men are labOring under at this time
are due largely to the want of proper
consideration of the actual state of
things as they eXist-a failure to COM
prehend the fact that there can be no
very considerable scarcity of provisions
when prices are remunerative, and act
ing upon the assured presumption that
such can be the case.


DEALING IN OPTIONS NOTHING BUT


GAMBLING.


And while upon this subject it may be
as well to allude to another which will
offset in losses as much, if not more,
than is gained in profits. We alIude to
the species of gambling operations car
ried on on 'change under the name of
"option deals" which is becoming now
a marked feature here. The sum and
substance of this kind of trading is that
it is simply betting on what the future
price of a certain commodity will be at
certain fixed time or date, or a period
of time extending for thirty days at
sometime in the future. We hold to
the opinion thata q commission merchant
who is engaged in handling the proper
ty of others, has no more right to jeOp-
ardize the interests of his customers by
gambling in this manner, than he would
have in using other peoples money in a
venture at a faro-table. We speak plain
ly when we say that under no circum-
stances would we consign our property
to mmission-merchant who is con-
tinuAlly trading in risks of so uncertain
a nature; and one of the great evils of
this optiOn-trading is that the property
of innocent and unsuspecting parties is
constantly placed in jeopardy when en-
trusted to gamblers of this sort. We
hold that it is proper for the commercial
readers of the Times who reside in the
interior, to ascertain, when they consign
their property to parties here, whether
the party to whom they send it is doing
8 legitimate commission business, or
whether he is betting on whatProvidenee
will do with the crops two or three
months hence, and is buying up property
in anticipation that Providence will ac-
commodate him with constant rains or
blighting frost ere the corn natures.
The gaming-table where the deals are
square is even less uncertain than deals
of the kind we speak of. This option
trading is comparatively new feature
here, and the evil results of it are already
beginning to crop out. So long as men
are trading in their own money and not
the money that belongs to other people, |
it is all well enough; then, they alone |
are the sufferers; but in nine cases out
of ten they are using the means that be-
long to other parties, and when the time |
comes to settle, they find the cards have
gone against them; that there has been