OPERATING IN STOCKS.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 442, 13 November 1875, Page 3

OPERATING IN STOCKS.

(New York Herald.)

A San Francisco correspondent gives a lively description of the grand hubbub that is daily witnessed at the Mining Stock Exchange in that city during the busy season. It is worthy a visit from the stranger of an investigating turn of mind. Facing the great entrance door, on a raised dais, stand the caller and his secretary. Ranged to the right and left are rows of chairs occupied by the members of the Board —seats worth 25,000 or 30, OOOdols in gold, apiece. At the call of a given stock these eighty men—the number is limited—rush frantically to the space fronting the cgller’s desk. Then the scene defies description; ’tis Bedlam let loose. Yelling, shouting, wildly gesticulating on all sides, and to the uniniated a free fight seems more than imminent. Finally out of the Babel-confusion of voices the caller brings forth order, and proceeds to announce the various sales effected within these brief moments of confusion. This form concluded, another mining stock is called, and the wild scene is recommenced, and so on for two mortal hours, morning and evening. The business is a prosperous one ; Imt men not infrequently therein barter their health and reason for gold. Speculating in mining stocks is a temptation few can resist. Millionaires and servant girls, women and children, preachers and sports, all join in this legitimate gamble. Palatial mansions are upspringing, as by magic, throughout the city—“ made in stocks.” Men and women are almost daily shipped to the Insane Asylum—sent there by “ stocks.” Any child on the street can give you a lucid definition of the mystic words, margin, points, assessments, buyer and seller thirty, &c. The (elsewhere) comfortable fortune of 100,000dol or 200,000d0l is hero only a moderate competency.