GAMBLING IN FOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 130, 1 June 1908, Page 4

GAMBLING IN FOOD.

Some time ago President Roosevelt gave fresh cause of offence to the American trust magnates by threatening to legislate against gambling in food supplies or any other necessaries of life. With his usual directness of vision, the President has found here a genuine, public evil with which all Governments may at any time feel constrained to grapple. For there is no doubt that in all the great markets of the world the price of the chief staple commodities which are made the subject of wholesale speculation depends more upon purely fictitious bargaining than upon the legitimate and normal operation of the laws of supply and demand. Within the last seven years the people of the United States have seen coal and meat sent up to famine prices, and the prices of cotton and wheat constantly oscillating from one extreme to the other with ruinous rapidity, merely to suit the convenience or the greed of a handful of enormously wealthy financiers. A Chicago " corner " in oats and maize has just cleared half a million sterling for one lucky operator; but it is impossible to estimate the losses inflicted on the long-suffering general public by this selfish manipulation of their supplies. When Baeher temporarily cornered the northern coal market ,six winters ago, untold

misery was inflicted on ecores of thousands, and on helpless women and children, merely to satisfy one man's greed. When gully cornered the cotton supply, three years since, he did more Injury to Lancashire and to England's export trade than many a great war has occasioned. Surely it ought not to be in the power of irresponsible millionaires thus to imperil the welfare and prosperity of millions to suit their own selfish ends. President Roosevelt will certainly find it difficult to restrict such operations by statutory means, but such cases as these appear to us legitimate occasions for the interference of the State to promote the end oil all honest legislation—" the greatest good for the greatest possible number."