Item #18128 Cold Facts About Bucket Shops. Their Development Co-Incident with the Enormous Shrinkage in the Value of Farm Products and the General Business Depression. A Gigantic Evil and Its Cure. CHICAGO COMMERCE, W. G. Nicholas.

Cold Facts About Bucket Shops. Their Development Co-Incident with the Enormous Shrinkage in the Value of Farm Products and the General Business Depression. A Gigantic Evil and Its Cure

Chicago: Business Publishing Company, 1887.

pp 11, [1]. Stapled wrappers. Light soiling, a few short tears, good to very good overall. Stamp in red ink on front cover urges lawmakers to “Lift a Crushing Burden from Agriculture and Commerce” and notes that the pamphlet has been liberally distributed to state and federal legislators. Nicholas was editor of the Daily Business, a short-lived Chicago newspaper concerned with “Money, Stocks, Grain, Provisions, Produce and Live Stock.” Here he argues that recent steep declines in grain prices are largely due to the rise of “bucket shops”— small, private establishments where customers placed wagers on the price movement of commodities, rather than participating directly in the market. Nicholas urges lawmakers to protect honest citizens from “these pernicious institutions,” which are “a national curse, a public menace, and a source of direct personal loss to every Famer and Merchant—and indirectly to every honest member of society.” Ultimately, legislators agreed with him, outlawing bucket shops in most states by within the next two decades. Today the term “bucket shop” is often used to refer to any fraudulent or dishonest trading operation.

Item #18128

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