Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1917 — Producers Victims of Gambling System Dignified by Name of Speculation [ARTICLE]

Producers Victims of Gambling System Dignified by Name of Speculation

By CHARLES S. BARRETT

Preiident Farmer*’ Education*! and Co-operative Union of America

Anything done in the name of business so hypnotizes the American people that they become very polite, and thus it has come about that we have dignified gambling by calling it speculation. The difference between legitimate business and this gambling which we call speculation is that in an honest business transaction both parties to the deal are benefited, whereas in the speculative transaction one man must lose that another may win. In the the producers whose products are the counters in the gambling game are the big losers, though they may never have had any part in the gambling. , , For fourteen years we have been publishing this truth, but never have we been able to get a hearing. The cotton farmers of the South have in the last 49 years been robbed of fully eight thousand millions of dollars •by the speculation in cotton. In the same period the wheat farmers have been mulcted in an equally large sum by the speculation in wheat. We can see now where some of the wealth produced in the country has gone, it has taken this frightful war, with all its calamities and sufferings to open the eyes of the people to the evils of speculation. And •evep now they only see it because the food gamblers are making everybody ipay the losses that they may pile up unearned millions. Now the people are talking about lampposts for food speculators, that drastic remedy would be merely treating a symptom. Tl» disease must be eradicated. We must abolish speculation in all our