Ready to Make All Deals.
The bucket shop proprietor is ready to make all deals offered in any commodity that fluctuates in price. He may call himself banker and broker, or commission merchant, or disguise his business under the form of an incorporated enterprise or exchange. But he is still a common gambler. The interest of the proprietor of a bucket shop is at all times opposed to that of his patrons, as the profits of the shop are measured by the losses of the patrons.
Bucket shops should not be confounded with the great public markets of the world, where buyer and seller, producer and consumer, investor and speculator meet in legitimate trade; for the pretended buying of millions of bushels of grain in bucket shops will not add a fraction of a cent to the price of the product of the farm, nor will the pretended selling of as much increase the supplies of the consumer or lessen the cost of his loaf a farthing. Nor should they be confounded with the offices of legitimate brokers which they endeavor to imitate in appearance.
Name Coined in London.
The term "bucket shop," as now applied in the United States, was first used in the late '70s. It was coined in London fifty years ago, when it had absolutely no reference to any species of speculation or gambling. Beer swillers from the East Side (London) went from street to street with buckets, draining every keg they came across and picking up cast-off cigar butts. Arriving at a den they gathered for social amusement around a table and passed the bucket as a loving cup, each taking a "pull" as it came his way.
In the interval were smoking and rough jokes. The den came to be called a bucket shop. Later the term was applied, both in England and the United States, as a byword of reproach to small places where grain and stock deals were counterfeited.
Yet the bucket shop is a gambling den par excellence, with all the paraphernalia necessary for the deception of the unsuspecting. One may place a $10 bet in the bucket shop, pay a commission of 25 per cent to the "bucket shopper," who may so shuffle the "cards" that the bettor may have to lose, even after he has won. As an example:
Game Neatly Fixed.
The one thing absolutely necessary to the bucket shop are quotations, never from a legitimate board of trade, but through leased wires, or wire tappings, or from some other fake source. For the instant that the "quotations" cannot be written upon the blackboards the betting must cease. The bet of the customer is that before a certain grain drops off a point against him, it will advance a point or more in his favor, and the bucket shopper takes the bet, holding the stake himself. Frequently the bettor may realize that he has won a point, or two, or three, and may insist upon the bucket shop selling for him. Perhaps the victim lives at a distance from the shop and must write or wire his "broker." He wires for the "broker" to sell, and perhaps gets a message in reply to the effect that the market must go much better than that; that he refuses to sacrifice his patron's best interests in that way, and will hold on for the certain rise. In most cases this patron is immensely flattered, until within a few days the market is "off" again, wiping out not only his profits, but his original margins as well.