AMERICAN ITEMS

Hokitika Guardian, 3 February 1930, Page 5

AMERICAN ITEMS

BROKERS CONSPIRACY

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). VANCOUVER, Jan. 31. More firms feature in a nation-wide drive against an alleged wholesale brokers’ conspiracy to defraud the public.

At -Victoria/ Hugh Allan, the oldest firm, and at Winnipeg, St. Obis Fur-; long- Matthews, have been assigned. The latter firm have closed all their, offices, leaving Saskatoon and other centres without any trading.

There is no trading in Ottawa because all of the brokers have been suspended by the Stock Exchange.

There was a sensation at Calgary, when two suspended millionaires, I. W. Solloway and D. F. Patterson, appeared at the exchange, trading in defiance of the Stock Exchange’s order that trading should cease. Both were rejected, and their previous trading was cancelled.

The drive is likely to compel legislation banning'all except cash trading in stocks.

f ' At Ottawa, the Provincial Investigator has compelled one firm to buy back all the stock that it had sold in a dubious mine.

CHICAGO WHEAT

(Received this day at 8 a.m.) NEW YORK, Feb. 1

New York Times, Chicago correspondent says eight months of bullish effort by speculators and grain trade general in the United States and Canada to ignore the supply and demand conditions of the world’s wheat myrkeitsi has collapsed in the last fortnight, and declines in all grains to the lowest levels of the present season without improving the demand, has resulted. At the same time a distrustful feeling has been created by foreign buyers of wheat who have been told by trade leaders as well as by members of the Government’s Agricultural Board, that they wo.uld ha’Je to come to America for supplies. They have ignored the predictions so far . and bought leisurely on a . declining market. They are positive, dictators of values, gather than being dictated to. Wheat prices here have declined around ten per cent on a seven day continuous break and are 45 to 58 cents below the high point reached late last July and early August. Tlie decline is the culmination of an effort to unload on foreigners at higher prices, large surplus of crops in 1928-1929, which were held in United States and Canada owing to a. reduction of about 160 millions bushels in Argentine and Australian crops compared with previous seasons. Argentine estimates have only 64 millions bushels for export from the present crop whereof .18,800,000 have been shipped already.

CHICAGO CRIME.

INVESTIGATOR SHOT DEAD

(Received this day at 8 a.m.) "I"- CHICAGO, Feb. 2. Julius Coseiiheim, for fifteen veais a criminal investigator, kissed his wife good-bye . and had walked only a block when two gangsters shot him dead. The police practically threw up their hands when it came to naming the assassins with whom he had imirrod enmity. It is impossible to theorise which group decreed bis death.