Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1892 — BIG DECLINE IN WHEAT [ARTICLE]

BIG DECLINE IN WHEAT

HEADS AND HEARTS ACHE IN THE CHICAGO PIT. .if After Prices Go Pumping Up and D. wn lor an Hour or So May Wheat Drops Five Cents and Partiridge I* Happy— Cleveland Is In Doubt. Took a Big Tumble. The Chicago wheat market started off Monday as if it were going out of sight; it finally collapsed and dropped as 1 If a corner had “busted” and as if a panic had resulted. It was a most remarkably; affair, however. Without the collapse, of any corner, without any sensational failure, without , any panic of any sort, there was a straightaway decline in the' price of five cents. This big drop was all the more remarkable becauefl it was a drop from under 85 cents. People who' had orders to execute were in distressevery minute. Although the market; had the semblance .of OBe, U was impossible to execute'Mffwfiertf fit. anything like one price. Indeed, it was. the fact that it was impossible most of, the time to execute orders for 25,C00 at' one price. These difficulties wero a 3 great early, when the market- was advanxMig, as they were later, when the market xvas going to pieces, -the sealp-j lug element, the governor at all times’ of tht*-market fluctuations, was afraid to act. “Kicks" from eustohiprs were, jn-i' numerable. Explanations were almoat impossible, because traders themselves hardly knew why it was they were doing so poorly. Tn the pit it was a dav of backaches, headaches and heartaches. v The first incident was the receipt of weak cables, a surprise all around. The Government report Saturday afternoon had made the condition of winter wheat 81J, a very low figure, as almost everybody on this side thought. It was the expectation that "the foreigners would look at it in the same way. An opening decline at Liveip<ol was a stunnnr. The tiade didn’t know what to make of it. A happy thought struck one bright fellow. Liverpool was laboring under a misapprehension. There had been a drop ® the price' Saturday, and there also had been the Governmtnt crop report. The drop in the price had preceded the Government, and really had had nothing to do with it. But here was the discovery! Liverpool, Ae bright man said, thought the Saturday decline at Chicago was on the Government report. Pretty nearly everybody adopted that brilliant idea, charged himself with being stupid, and declared that the closing Liverpool ; cables would be higher. The theory j helped thy price’, of wheat, .May had ! opened at 84. It got to 85J. But it *ld not hold. A failure in London settled, the thing. Messrs. Borriman, Philips’ <t Co., of London, a concern known to grain people the world over .for thirty years, were annouced suspended. The jig was up from that moment. Wheat | started down. From 85 cents it got to ' 84 cents; from 84 cents to 83 cents; f’4>m 83 cents to 82 cents. Before the close it was at 8(1} cents for May, cents under the price of, the < arly morning. The chwe, 80g cents, was only a little over the bottom.