Just an allusion may be made to a practice of modern speculation, of which some one has forcibly and truthfully spoken as “exaggerated gambling.” It is what is known as “cornering the market.” Speculators by forming a combination gain a control of the market, and force it up and down to serve their own interests. In this way immense fortunes have been made. The writer’s limits do not allow of his entering into a discussion of the methods employed. Heartless, cruel, wicked, are mild terms to apply to this “exaggerated gambling.” It is true that, by this cornering of the market, men are “squeezed” and fleeced and ruined who are not themselves scrupulous as to their methods; but the effects of the pernicious practice often do not stop with these men. Great corners in grain markets, by raising the price of bread-stuffs, have resulted in untold suffering among the poor, and affected in a most unhappy way the whole country. In 1879 there were two famous corners which will not soon be forgotten, a corner in wheat, and the “Armour pork corner.” As a result of these, the price of pork was more than doubled, flour advanced two dollars a barrel, and there was a general decided rise in value of the necessaries of life. Millions of money were made, but the loss to the country was immense, and the suffering occasioned incalculable. It was estimated, in a report made to a state legislature, that the syndicate which manipulated the wheat corner was the occasion of a loss to the public in different ways of not less than three hundred millions. As yet there is no punishment by the law of the enormity of which these cases are illustrations.
A final word can hardly be omitted with regard to the effects of speculation in general upon those engaged in it, and upon communities where the spirit is rife. Even those who are so hardened that they are unable to see that certain peculiar forms of it are immoral and wrong, as is claimed, will hardly deny that speculation is a pursuit which is to be censured on other grounds. The excitement of it is neither physically, mentally, nor morally healthful. It has a fascination which is dangerous; to break away from it comes to be like the Ethiopian’s changing his skin, or the leopard’s his spots. The cases are sadly frequent where it unfits one for the enjoyment of home, the pleasures of society, the duties of the citizen and the Christian. And in a multitude of cases it has brought those absorbed in it to the mad-house and to an untimely grave. The judgment of the candid and reflective must be that “making haste to be rich,” even by ways confessedly proper, is not best. Moreover, terms too strong can hardly be used in speaking of the harmful effects upon a community of a spirit of speculation filling the air. There is seen a feverish condition of things which is not well. Regular business is neglected; duties are passed by; the action of others is blindly and rashly followed. And it is always the case that, sooner or later, to by far the greater number who give way to the spirit and embark in the glittering speculative schemes, there comes disaster. Communities could easily be pointed out in whose condition of prosperity strikingly reversed one might read: “The demon of speculation hath done this.”