"Speculation" an Unmeaning Term.
Yet with this $100,000 a day going into the hopper of frenzied speculation of all kinds, Bradstreet's for the year 1907 showed business failures from speculation as one-eighth of 1 per cent of the total failures of the country.
Whatever may be Bradstreet's definition of the word "speculation," as used in his lists, the word to the average business man who knows whereof he talks is as unmeaning as any other in the business dictionary. Suppose a man somewhere in a country town loses money in any speculative venture anywhere under the sun. If it is a few dollars only, he may not speak of it at all. If it is enough to embarrass him, perhaps he may have to speak. Under these circumstances the best possible thing to do is to explain that he lost it "on the Chicago Board of Trade." If he has no credit at stake in the matter, and is sore, he may yell murder over his losses "on the board." But hundreds of such men have lost their money in bucket shops, and scores of them have lost it at poker or some other gambling game.
"Board of Trade" Falsely Blamed.
Every little while a banker somewhere goes wrong with funds that are intrusted to him, and in the telling of the story the "Chicago Board of Trade" is the secret of his undoing.
One of the marked cases of the kind was that of the Aurora banker who defalcated with $90,000, "lost on the Board of Trade."
But when the story was run down it was discovered that his money was lost in a bucket shop in Hammond, Ind., which had been driven out of Chicago through the efforts of the Chicago Board.
When $100,000, at a conservative estimate, every day, is lost by the American public in bucket shops, just the thing that such a shop is "in being" should be of economic interest and consideration.
Within the knowledge of tens of thousands of citizens some acquaintance or person of whom they have had personal knowledge has gone "broke" in grain speculation.
Yet to find a man who has lost his fortune on the race tracks or in a gambling den is not at all an easy task.