MILLIONAIRES' PANIC.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8810, 11 May 1907, Page 4

MILLIONAIRES' PANIC.

New York, March 8.

A millionaires' panic prevailed in Wall Street to-day, and the scenes which ensued eclipsed anything •wit-' 5 ; nessed for many years past. - -V. " For months past the gieat :railw«yj • magnates, whose millions cailoiily: ba estimated by the fa'ilways., tag?.. control, have been skilfully and persistently sending up the price ot stocks until limits have been reached far in advance of the " intrinsic values of the various stocks. . Their object was to unload their holdings on the general public at hip-h prices, and had it not been for the fact that trade is in such an exceptionally booming condition that all loose money has been invested in it, the manoeuvre would no doubt have succeeded, as it- has done in the past, j But I his time the public, have j held aloof almost unanimously, and ! in order to keep prices at their , high level, the magnates have had Ito buy largo quantities ;of -stock. I In fact, the- tables have been turned. | Instead of the public buying from I the millionaires, the millionaires I have been the purchasers. S At last the time for readjustment

lias come. The extreme stringency of the money market and the falling dueTof a number of very large payments combined, hare forced on the millionaires the necessity of raising ready monoy. To do this they Jhave had to soil their stock, and it came to-a struggle between them as to who should lose the least. It has, indeed, beon battle of financial Titans—such a battle as under different conditions would have caused widespread disaster throughout the country. As it is, it is only the millionaires who have suffered, for there has been no sign at all of public participation in the loss. Such a jettisoning of stock as has taken place has not been equalled since the memorable days of the panic of 1884. A total of 2,522,000 shares have changed hands, which is believed to surpass anything known on the Exchange since the Northern Paicifio panic of 1901. Many of the stocks which have boomed so enormously recently suffered very heavy "loss. The brokers, especially those who do the business of the great railway magnates, were bombarded with seling orders. Many of them utterly lost their heads in their.endeavour to sell stock. The margin between the buyers and the sellers was often as much as twenty and thirty points. Central of New Jersey, for instance, was being offered at 190, while the highest bid which could be obtained was 160. ~, , It was practically impossible to keep pace with the fall in prices, and many bargains involving hundreds of thousands of pounds were made on guess work and at many points cither above or below the ruling price of the moment. Wild rumours were in constant circulation on the floor of the House, Mr Harrison being the central figure in most of them. Disorderly rushes from one part of the Exchaugo to another wore made every few moments, as groups of brokers would dash towards some person supposed to have special information regarding the rumour of the moment. Dozens of dealers and brokers wore to be soon with their hats smashed in and their coats torn to slircds, and some emphatically declared that the clay's experience was the roughest ever known on 'Change. Philadelphia and Reading shares, which scored the greatest fall yesterday, again led the slump, in which practically every ;class ofi share on the market, even those usually regarded as gilt-edged, participated. Before the day had closed over a dozen different classes of stocks had fallen from twelve to ; twenty points, while losses from , six to ten points were common, i The scene when the chairman's i hammer fell at the close was unrivalled. There was a wild yell, and brokers, dealers and their asl sistants joined in a tumultuous ' waving of hats and cheering. Similar scenes have occurred at Boston and Philadelphia, where selling orders larger than for _ years past wore carried out at the bidding of millionaire clients. To relieve the situation the banks were lending money at ten per cent, and before the day closed all money for day renewals rose to as much as I 25 per cent.