FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at The Travelers’ Rest, New Albany, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has taken a little flyer in short ribs on ’Change, and has accidentally come into the line of his father’s vision.

XIV

Chicago, July 15, 189—

Dear Pierrepont: I met young Horshey, of Horshey & Horter, the grain and provision brokers, at luncheon yesterday, and while we were talking over the light run of hogs your name came up somehow, and he congratulated me on having such a smart son. Like an old fool, I allowed that you were bright enough to come in out of the rain if somebody called you, though I ought to have known better, for it seems as if I never start in to brag about your being sound and sweet that I don’t have to wind up by allowing a rebate for skippers.

Horshey was so blamed anxious to show that you were over-weight—he wants to handle some of my business on ’Change—that he managed to prove you a light-weight. Told me you had ordered him to sell a hundred thousand ribs short last week, and that he had just bought them in on a wire from you at a profit of four hundred and sixty-odd dollars. I was mighty hot, you bet, to know that you had been speculating, but I had to swallow and allow that you were a pretty sharp boy. I told Horshey to close out the account and send me a check for your profits and I would forward it, as I wanted to give you a tip on the market before you did any more trading.

I inclose the check herewith. Please indorse it over to the treasurer of The Home for Half Orphans and return at once. I will see that he gets it with your compliments.

Now, I want to give you that tip on the market. There are several reasons why it isn’t safe for you to trade on ’Change just now, but the particular one is that Graham & Co. will fire you if you do. Trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole—it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water. The wheat pit is only thirty feet across, but it reaches clear down to Hell. And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he’s buying something that the other fellow hasn’t got. When a man sells, he’s selling something that he hasn’t got. And it’s been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit. When a speculator wins he don’t stop till he loses, and when he loses he can’t stop till he wins.

You have been in the packing business long enough now to know that it takes a bull only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if you’ll believe me when I tell you that they can skin a bear just as quick on ’Change, you won’t have a Board of Trade Indian using your pelt for a rug during the long winter months.

Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There’s nothing in it. The poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires. When I sell futures on ’Change, they’re against hogs that are traveling into dry salt at the rate of one a second, and if the market goes up on me I’ve got the solid meat to deliver. But, if you lose, the only part of the hog which you can deliver is the squeal.

I wouldn’t bear down so hard on this matter if money was the only thing that a fellow could lose on ’Change. But if a clerk sells pork, and the market goes down, he’s mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes in them and bad habits as the small change of his profits. And if the market goes up, he’s likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money.