Here you get from January, 1920, to August, 1921, when these value assassinations culminated, a corn debacle of 92 cents a bushel and a cotton debacle of 28 cents a pound. If you had known that this value assassination was en route and had "gone short" 1,000,000 bushels of corn you could have robbed the corn growers of this land of $920,000, couldn't you? And some "high financiers" did that very thing. If you had known that cotton was going to shrink at least 28 cents a pound and had "gone short" 10,000 bales (500 pounds to the bale) you could have robbed the cotton growers of this land of $1,400,000, couldn't you? And some high financiers did.
Take a look at some more value murders.
| 1920 | Wheat No. 2 Red Winter Chicago | Wool Ohio Grades |
| January | 2.63 | 1.23 |
| May | 2.97 | 1.16 |
| June | 2.89 | 1.00 |
| July | 2.80 | .90 |
| August | 2.47 | .87 |
| September | 2.40 | .83 |
| October | 2.20 | .72 |
| November | 2.05 | .69 |
| December | 2.01 | .54 |
| 1921 | ||
| January | 1.96 | .54 |
| February | 1.91 | .54 |
| March | 1.67 | .52 |
| April | 1.38 | .52 |
| May | 1.56 | .50 |
| June | 1.43 | .49 |
| July | 1.22 | .49 |
| August | 1.23 | .49 |
A destruction of $1.40 a bushel on wheat and of 74 cents a pound on wool ought to satisfy the most murderous destructionist of values, oughtn't it? You can make your own computations as to the millions coteries of "bears" could make—and doubtless did make—out of these value assassinations.
Have some more views of values on the toboggan.
| 1920 | Steers at Chicago | Penn. Crude Oil |
| January | 15.93 | 5.06 |
| May | 12.60 | 6.10 |
| June | 15.03 | 6.10 |
| July | 15.38 | 6.10 |
| August | 15.35 | 6.10 |
| September | 15.25 | 6.10 |
| October | 14.68 | 6.10 |
| November | 14.57 | 6.10 |
| December | 12.09 | 6.10 |
| 1921 | ||
| January | 9.84 | 5.79 |
| February | 9.31 | 4.18 |
| March | 9.56 | 3.00 |
| April | 8.71 | 3.18 |
| May | 8.42 | 3.35 |
| June | 8.09 | 2.65 |
| July | 8.40 | 2.25 |
| August | 8.77 | 2.25 |
When you grease the toboggan with $2.81 a barrel on oil and $7.16 a hundred on steers you can slide a good many millions of dollars into the maws of foresighted "short sellers," can't you?
This panorama of value murders could be continued for pages of tables. They all tell the same story. Granulated sugar dropped in the same time from .15 cents a pound to .05 cents a pound; copper ingots from .19 cents a pound to .11 cents a pound; cotton yarn from 72 cents a pound to 25 cents a pound; pig iron from $37.75 per ton to $18.20 per ton; hides from 40 cents a pound to 14 cents a pound and so on down the line.
These are the corpses strewn all along America's highways of production. What was the bludgeon which hit all these commodities on the head and drove them into the pit of loss? It was the persistent, wanton, ruthless and cold-blooded calling of loans and refusal of bank credits and contraction of currency by Federal Reserve oligarchy. They said they'd do it and they did it—aplenty. Here is the bludgeon, look at it.