Another time I filled my cribs with 25 cent corn and held it for the summer market. When I was bid 49% cents a bushel, I jokingly told Mr. Worthy that I couldn’t figure fractions very well, and that I would wait for even money. Fifty cents was considered a high price for corn then—but usually when it would reach near that figure, the holders would begin to talk one dollar corn. It was a year when the corn speculators just didn’t know what to do, after the price began to slip.
Alpheus Kempton, over north of Netawaka near the Indian reservation, had 5,000 bushels stored on the farm. He told me he had been watching my cribs, and thought that maybe I had inside information of a come-back in prospect. I too had been watching some cribs, with similar thoughts. The Greenleaf-Baker firm had 20,000 bushels stored in two long cribs at Farmington. As I frequently traveled the railroad—on a pass—and noticed the corn had not been moved out, I thought that maybe, after all, I had not erred in letting the high bids get away from me. I told Mr. Baker that I had been watching his Farmington cribs for a reminder as to when it would be time for me to sell mine. He laughed, saying, “I’ve sold it (on the Board) and bought it back probably twenty times.”
Well, Alpheus and I—we held our corn over another year—and then sold it for 301/2 cents a bushel. May I say that by this time I had brushed up on my arithmetic. And Christian or no, who is there to say I did not gamble that time? I still maintain that I gambled when I bought the corn. However, there were times when I sold 25-cent corn for 70 cents—and most of it went back to the country here. The only advantage that I could see in storing corn instead of buying it on the Board, was the possibility of striking a local market.
And again, I bought 5,000 bushels of wheat on the Chicago Board, at 61 cents a bushel, and margined it with $100. As the market advanced, I bought seven more five thousand bushel lots with the profits, making 40,000 bushels in all. It was a very dry time in Kansas, and wheat was jumping three to five cents a day—and had reached a fraction under $1.00 on the Thursday before Memorial Day, which of course would be a holiday, with no market.
My profit on the single $100 investment was now nearly $4,000.00. I had planned to get out before the close of the market on Thursday, because I did not want to run the risk of carrying the deal over the holiday. But the weather map, just in from Kansas City, indicated clear skies for Kansas over the week-end. This, coupled with the exuberant spirits of the excited dealers on the Atchison Board, caused me to change my mind. One more day of dry weather would likely double my earnings.
The weather man was wrong; horribly wrong.
It began raining in Wetmore about 10 o’clock that night. You’ve probably been lulled to sleep by rain patter on the roof. Believe me, there was no lullaby sleep in the constant rain patter on the roof over me that night. It rained off and on here all day Friday. Everyone I met on the street here exclaimed, “Fine rain, John!” I would say, “Yep”—and think something else. It was truly a $4,000.00 rain, in reverse—so far as I was concerned.
On Saturday morning, the speculators were back on the Atchison Board of Trade floor—to a man. The rain had washed their faces clean of all animation. Mr. Roper, working with telegraph instrument, rose and faced the weary-laden boys. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve got good news — for nobody.” The death-like quiet for a fraction of a moment, as if we were standing in the Salt Lake Mormon tabernacle waiting for the usual pin-dropping demonstration, gave way to a concerted sigh. It had rained everywhere.
I sold 50,000 bushels at the opening. My profits were wiped out clean. The extra 10,000 bushels short sale made me $63.75 in about three minutes. And this, added to the return of my $100—and relief from liability—made me feel rich.
Though little or no wheat was grown here at that time, the Kansas wheat farmer was considered the biggest gambler of them all. Even so, having just got out of a big wheat deal, by “the skin of my teeth,” would it not be good business for me to take a “flyer” in some wheat land, and try growing the stuff?