GAMBLING IN GRAIN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22513, 17 December 1947, Page 8

GAMBLING IN GRAIN

AMERICAN SPECULATORS NEW YORK, Nov. 28. Government officials, bankers, barbers, butchers, judges, schoolteachers and even clergymen are speculating in grainA report prepared for Congress on the administration’s request for power to limit speculation, revealed that farmers and housewives were ’ the largest speculators in September’s hectic “bull” market. Officials looked sceptically at the latter category, and believe that women were used to screen their husbands, who want to keep their operations secret. In one month gamblers dealt in almost half of America’s total wheat crop, despite the fact that _ they did not possess a single grain of it. The list of occupations of speculators reads like a classified business directory. There are six clergymen involved, 40 school teachers, 71 Government officials, 22 bankers, 44 financiers, 158 wholesalers and manufacturers, 364 real estate operators, 79 judges and lawyers, 135 doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, 11 actors and musicians, and a number of newspaper repdrters, statisticians, accountants, butchers, bankers and barbers, 44 unemployed people, and 256 retired people.