Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1897 — DECEMBER WHEAT $1.09. [ARTICLE]

DECEMBER WHEAT $1.09.

This la the Highest Notch Touched Since the 1891 Corner. Amid the wildest excitement seen on the Chicago Board of Trade within the memory of the oldest trader December wheat sold for $1.09 Thursday. This is the highest mark which the cereal has reached since the historic combine of 1891. During the four hours of session a rise of 7% cents over the opening price was recorded. The Chicago price was 16 cents over Minneapolis and Duluth, 10 cents over New York and 7 cents over St. Louis. At this price the wheat of an eightyacre Kansas farm, land value sls per acre, was worth more than the land itself, the farm equipment and the house and barn. Not a farmer in Minnesota or the Dakotas with 2,400 bushels of wheat, the product of eighty acres last harvest" but what could have sold his grain in Chicago Thursday for more than his land would bring, and have a few hundred dollars to the good. If the pace of the first few minutes had been maintained during the rest of the session it is probable that kernels of wheat would have sold as high as diamonds at the close. The cereal shot up to $1.05% at a bound and the holders of big wheat contracts could have disposed of them at this stage without any trouble. When $1.05 »was bid for December wheat some of the bulls thought the temperature was getting rather high and dumped a lot of their claims. This action had the effect of easing the market and checking temporarily the efforts of the more aggressive. Ten minutes of comparative quiet reigned in the stormy session, and then the bulls by a coup started the figures their own way again. So complete was the surprise that many of the dcyilers declared that they expected to see the price sail up to $1.50 before the end of the session. At $1.06 the explosion of a Krupp gun could not have been henrd above the pandemonium. The bulls forced the cereal by fractions of a cent up to $1.07. Here their foemen made a temporary rally and brought another elevator full of grain into their midst. A half hour of deadlock resulted, but the dealers with the horns, metaphorically speaking, concentrated their forces on a weak point in the other ranks and shot the price tb $1.09, the high water mark of the day and of six years. Then succeeded the usual slump as the time for the clang of the gong approached and December closed at $1.07. ,