THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1909. GAMBLING WITH THE PEOPLE'S FOOD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3170, 22 April 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1909. GAMBLING WITH THE PEOPLE'S FOOD.

The cable has been busy during the last few days recording one of those great American gambles, the losses and profits attached to which loom up in heroic proportion in the eyes of ordinary speculators. Mr Patten, a "wheat speculator" of the type that appears every few years, plunges into the market, and either breaks himself or those whom he has gone up against. Mr Patten is a winner this time, having trapped some millionaire "sports," and forced them to buy at prices current in order to meet bheir engagements—which is another way of saying that he closed down on the rival speculators who had contracted to sell, and made thew either deliver the goods before the price fell as low as they were calculating upon or compromise v/ifh him. All this would be interesting, but not important, were it not that the game men like Mr Patten disport themselves at is earned on at the expense of people who can least afford it, and, in fact, depends tor its success on the prices of their necessities of life being forced up. What I dear wheat means to millions in other countries besides the United States needs rio explaining; and dear wheat is Mr Patten's objective, m whose pursuit he has already gone so far that heavy rises are reported, together with the resolve of the master of the situation to hold out for still more. A syndicate holding 10,000.000 bushels has joined Mr Patten, who was also reported to have 15,000,000 bushels stored in Minnesota awaiting his pleasure. And so responsive is the remotest market to the operations of a Napoleonic "cornerer" that the price of bread has risen in London, where the bakers, like Mr Patten, are demanding an even Defter price. That one man or any gang of men should be able to lock up the world's food until the unfortunate public bids up to the price at which the triumphant cornerer sees fit to let it £'o is one of those possibilities which grimly remind us how legislation has yet to achieve in preventing injustice. What to do about it is not easy to suggest, but one mcral which clearly obtrudes from such transactions is that those who engage in them are helping the

advocates of Socialism. Market manipulators of this class, men of money and large interests, are among the first and loudest to protest against nationalisation, yet theij dealings are of the kind that wil drive society to it if anything will. When "speculation" becomes so rampantly callous as to gamble with the food of mankind as a stake, to be withheld or produced as suits the game, it can scarcely be surprising if the victims are prompted to propose desperate remedies. It is hard for a man pinched by hunger to reason on calm economic lines with the millionaire market-rigger who is pinching him.