Cotton Speculation

A sharp rise in future contracts for cotton has greatly stimulated speculative interest throughout the South. The result has been that unscrupulous individuals in Manhattan have organized "odd-lot" cotton exchanges in order to bucket the orders of small customers. Many of the latter live at considerable distances from New York City, and are through inexperience unable to distinguish between the primary cotton market on the New York Cotton Exchange, and the mushroom imitations of it which crooks are so frequently ready to establish during a cotton boom. Officers of both the New York and New Orleans cotton exchanges are cooperating with the authorities to close up these cotton bucketeers, and evidently with success. Yet when the inevitable smash comes, no doubt the legitimate cotton exchanges will be blamed by many victimized but inexperienced bucket shop customers for their losses.