FRENZIED FINANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 79, 3 April 1926, Page 7

FRENZIED FINANCE

.WALL STREET'S' WILD PERIOD

THE.GREAT IIARCH BOOM.

/ (Special to "The Evening Post") 'VANCOUVER,-10th'March. Said to be due to a leak of "inside" information regarding a merger o£ "nickelplate" interests, for which everyone including the President has been blamed, a panic broke on the New York StockSExchange in the last hour of, business on Tuesday, 3rd March, in* which a frantic orgy of selling gave Wall Street, its worst break of post-war history. It was followed, next day, by the most stupendous volume of trading in its history, the total sales realising 10 per cent, more in the number of shares disposed of than the previous highest record. During the last hour of Tuesday, the now was a seething maelstrom, of desperate traders, seeking to dispose of their utility stocks. The ticker machinery broke down under the strain, and was runuing nlSPu* behlnd time- Estates of '■'2™?'^^ hi&t-aa a billion dollars. In the wild attempt to get selling orders in before the exchange closed, clothing was torn, and men fell back exhausted from the "milling" and shouting pi tne densely-packed crowd Fromall over the United States frantic instructions were sent to Wall Street to sell lots held by small investors before the market crashed. The frenzy on the floor , was. duplicated in hundreds of cities as the ■ calls went out to investors for more mar- . gins. Those who could not supply the demand were wiped out. The decline ranged from 5 to 18 points at Wall Street, and up to 33 points on the "curb " A million lights burned in the skyscrapers in Manhattan all night. Clerks and stenographers laboured over their ledgers and typewriters, trying to catch up on the d?y^ marketing. Meanwhile, full details ot the story of the crash were going over the telegraph to the "bears," most of . whom were spending a holiday at Palm '.Beach, Miami, and other Florida resorts. •*■ ? e otas" v/as engineered in their interests, and they were losing nothing, they could afford to read the news unmoved Tremendous advances in many public utility stocks nad been one of the wonders of the long 1925 "bull" market, and this particular class of stock had been a subject of uncertainty because of the • natural hedges around potential utility earnings. ' - . • Speculators from among the public and protessional traders received the severest punishment in the history of the street. Never before has the total of spe- ., culation been so large; seldom have eecur- , ity values dropped so quickly. The total ■ values of all listed issues on the Stock ■< Exchange have depreciated in a fortnight ! by several billions of dollars. i' On the exchanges in Chicago, Phila- • delphia, and other cities costly breaks Occurred. The movement was undoubtedI ly pre-arranged, but it is said to be im- ' possible to name publicly those respon- <■ iible. The Inter-State Commerce Commission i disapproved of the nickel*plate merger, as [being coercive on the shareholders, and lit was this decision, leaking out, that j caused _ the damage. The merger would have linked up the New York, Chicago, and St. Louis Railway Company, k&own Its Nickel-Plate, with the Chesapeake and Ohio, Hocking Valley, Erie, and Mar<[uetto railroads. It would have joined Wore than 9000 miles of railway in ten States and Canada, with a property value exceeding a billion dollars.