N. Y. STOCK EXCHANGE AND LIBERTY BONDS
N. Y. Stock Exchange and Liberty Bonds When Operations of the Octopus Interfere With Government Business, Market Should Be Suppressed THE November issue of La Follette's briefly-mentioned how the...
...Ths Sage bill appropriated $1,250,000 for the erection of this prison...
...The market for all Liberty Bonds was-forced down...
...Besides thousands of "financial" papers, mostly dope sheets for some particular "financiers" or brokers, are furnished to those suckers who may bite...
...When the next bond issue comes along what will the government agents say to the people they urge to buy...
...With it, said one speaker, went "all the anguish, tears, disappointment and lost opportunity of reformation" that Sing Sing has stood for throughout most of its ninety-odd years of existence...
...The people bought with patriotic fervor...
...Prior to Mr...
...Soon after the first Liberty Bonds were issued they were sold on the New York Exchange for less than par...
...Sing Sing is actually to give way to a new, sanitary, industrial prison on wide acreage in the country...
...As the banks act in concert all the brokers may be "pinched" at the same time and a flood of selling orders go in and prices go down until the banks "loosen up" again...
...The prison that is to replace Sing Sing is to be built at Wingdale, in Dutchess county...
...Any man having a metropolitan paper could read each morning at breakfast that Uncle Sam's promise to pay was at a discount...
...The market was thimble rigged so that the New Your investors couid buy the government bonds at 2Vi per cent discount...
...When the New York banks take snuff the little banks in small towns sneeze, not because they want to but because they have to sneeze in sympathy...
...It is to be a farm industrial prison, composed of groups of detached or semi-detached small buildings...
...The cell-block at Sing Sing, built in 1825-30, was designed to fit the following idea of prison punishment, as reported by a contemporaneous committee of the State senate: "To make any impression upon the minds of either convicts or the public, there must be suffering (on the part of the inmates...
...They may refuse accommodation altogether and "call" their loans which arc due on demand, or they may increase interest rates...
...Its construction in the hands of the Commission on New Prisons, and excavation has already begun...
...In fact, it is a great gambling combination where prices on stocks and bonds are manipulated to fleece the suckers...
...Prices on the Exchange are largely regulated by a few banks in Wall Street acting in concert with their associates throughout the country...
...One member will offer for sale stocks and bonds and other members will bid for them, and the last price at which a sale is made in any day is called the closing price for the .stock and is in fact made the ruling price throughout the United States upon which brokers, banks, trust companies or other money lenders give credit...
...All calamities are "bear" arguments...
...When the broker with loans on margin is "called," he sells his stock-to pay the bank...
...One member offers for sale stock which he does not own and a fellow member in on the deal buys the stcck which he dees not pay for...
...We can give here only a few phases of how the masses of the people are systematically, robbed by its gi-ced for gold...
...Hence when a bear campaign is on rumors of poor crops are set afloat, storms and droughts are welcomed as good omens for the "bears," the loss of a battle, the sinking of a ship, the failure of a bank, the reduction of a dividend, increase in interest rates, any or all of these and more pass current for good news to the bears...
...Every country bank watches its exchange bank in a large business center...
...The suckers are directly that part of the public who are tempted to deal with the Exchange in their desire for easy money and indirectly all the public that are adversely affected by inflated prices, business depression, or panics...
...A proper system of taxation—one where wealth shall pay in proportion to its ability to pay—will lessen the necessity for bonds and will do away with the humiliation of the government going to the pawn brokers for money to win the war...
...Per contra, the bull campaign...
...The cell block has been a prolific cause of tuberculosis, rheumatism and other diseases, sending men forth into society much less fit for physical work than when they went in...
...Indeed the bonds later sold for 97 cents on the dollar...
...But that is not all...
...A membership entitles one to buy or sell on the Exchange tor himself or as a broker for outsiders...
...Prices are fixed largely by manipulation...
...Osborne's wardenship, the men spent 111 of the 168 hours of each week in these cells...
...Another Means of Price Fixing Another method of price fixing is by "Wash Sales...
...For instance, several years ago Northern Pacific stocks sold for a brief period—black Friday —on the Exchange for $1,000 a Share, whereas its real investment value was less than $100 a share...
...All the great financial interests this country are directly or indirectly interested in the New York Stock Exchange...
...Prisoners, too, hung with a will on the rope on which the governor put his weight to keep the stone from falling...
...He goes with his hat in his hand begging for money...
...To the prisoners, as well as to onlookers from the outside, the stone was the symbol of an outworn philosophy and treatment of human beings...
...Still another method is for a combination of brokers joining forces to "bear" a certain' stock, i. e., force the price down, or to "bull" a certain stock, i. e., force the price up...
...It is hard for the average man to understand the inner workings of the Wall Street Crowd...
...And if they can be forced to 2 1/2 per cent discount they can be forced lower Uncle Sam should see to it that this depreciation of these bonds, stamped with the faith and the credit of 100,000,000 of people, sold to patriotic and self-sacrificing citizens-, many of whom could illy afford the l)urcliase, and a very, very large percentage of whom to-day have to pay for them on the installment plan—the Government should see to it that these bonds are not made the football of the greedy gamblers of Wall Street.—The Sacramento Bee—Nov...
...N. Y. Stock Exchange and Liberty Bonds When Operations of the Octopus Interfere With Government Business, Market Should Be Suppressed THE November issue of La Follette's briefly-mentioned how the New York Stock Exchange was...
...The bull or bear campaigns are always staged...
...Even the United States Government is the victim— seemingly a helpless victim...
...For Better Prison Systems By WINTHROP D. LANE In The Survey F EW more dramatic scenes have been enacted in any prison in this country than that which occurred at Sing Sing November 9, when Governor Whitman, amid cheers of assembled law-breakers, lowered the first stone to be removed from the bastile cell-block at that institution in the process of demolition which the last legislature enjoined...
...The great daily papers publish the prices, and the "dope," and thus help advertise the business of the exchange...
...And yet honest men went out, day by day, and assured their friends and acquaintances that they should buy Liberty Bonds of the second issue at par as an investment...
...Two per cent of our people own 65 per cent of the wealth of the country—more than 150 billion dollars...
...Mow Prices arc Made Prices arc made by sales in the open pit during 1) .siness hours each day...
...The bull campaign is to catch suckers on a rising market and the bear campaign is to skin the suckers on a falling market...
...The broker in turn carries stock on margin for his "customers" and the customers are dumped to protect the broker unless they come across with more margin...
...Its lowering, said James M. Carter, superintendent of state prisons, was a bit of "tangible, evident, concrete prison reform," and George W. Wickersham, former attorney-general of the United States, added that it meant not only "the beginning of a new building, but of a new thought and a new tolerance as well...
...As collateral at any bank a bond would be figured at $97.50 instead of $100...
...unless a halt is called on the Wall Street gang...
...They afford 14*8 cubic feet of air space, less than one-third of the amount the law requires for a single lodger on the Bowery...
...During all the time that the canvass for the sale of the Second Liberty Bonds was being made the first issue were being sold at less than par...
...They claim that any such proposition interferes with the sale of the war bonds...
...Will they say: "We have a $100 bond here which we will sell you for $100, but to be in absolute good faith with you we must say that you can probably buy this same bond at public sale within the next thirty days at $97.50 or less...
...In theory, it is a place where those who have stocks and bonds for sale may sell, and where those who have money to invest in stocks or bonds may buy...
...It pleases the "Kept Press" to shout disloyalty at anyone who proposes a correct taxation system to finance the war...
...These instances are merely by way of illustration...
...Seats on the Exchange A member of the Exchange is entitled to a "seat" on the Exchange...
...The record of the "Wash Sale" may however make the market price and may tempt suckers to buy or scare the timid into selling accordingly as the price has been forced up or down...
...When the banks wish to force down prices cm the Exchange they tighten up on money...
...Common decency would suggest the suppressior of the New York Stock Exchange...
...It was clear that no law-maker in Sing Sing felt sorry to see his house pulled down about his ears...
...Then what happened...
...and to make any adequate impression, such sulferings as will excite feelings of terror...
...The Exchange Is an Octopus The Exchange is a financial Octopus with its tentacles leaching out into every community in this country...
...It gets daily information of market and money conditions...
...In 1914 United States steel sold on the Exchange at $40 and less, whereas its investment value was probably $100...
...Brokers who deal in stocks on the Exchange deal on margins, that is, a broker may buy a certain number of shares of stock by putting up in cash, say, ten per cent of the purchase price and the balance is carried as a loan by the selling broker...
...depreciating liberty Bonds and thereby interefering with the sale of the bonds...
...The cells at Sing Sing are 3 feet 3 inches wide, 6 feet 7 inches high, and 7 feet long...
...The banks in turn carry the brokers...
...In doing this they only seek to draw attention away from the big issues of taxation in order that their financial backers may make billions out of the war, the same as their forebears did during the Civil War...
...Seats" or memberships are transferable in a limited way and cost $60,000 each, and upwards...
...Who Are Members...
...Each sale is recorded arid the prices -may vary greatly during the day or from day to day...
...Government Banks The Exchange is an Octopus which not only draws into its maw the little fish but it gets big fish as well...
...As a natural result of the work of the Wall Street crowd, each issue of government bonds has to be made more attractive by higher interest rates or exemptions from taxes, and even then Uncle Sam has to hawk his I nds as a peddler does his wares...
...Prosperity brings joy to the "bulls...
...The stone had been pried loose earlier in the day by prisoners themselves...
...This has been the object of an energetic campaign in New York state for fifteen years...
...November 21st, less than 30 days after the canvass was made, seven days after bonds were ready for delivery these same bonds were sold in the New York market at $97.50, $2.50 below par...
...Briefly the New York Stock Exchange is a great market for stocks and bonds...
...Value Xot an Essential Element of Price The value of a stock or bond is not an essential element of price...
Vol. 9 • December 1917 • No. 12
