Bucketshops

Both the New York Stock Exchange and District Attorney Joab H. Banton have declared their intention of wiping out bucketshops. Yet each has proposed a different cure, and this has been the occasion of rather heated dispute between them. Mr. Banton declares that the only solution to the problem is to license stockbrokers. The Stock Exchange, on its part, maintains that the only way to stop bucketing is to put bucketshop keepers in jail and keep them there, and that what is needed is enforcement of old laws rather than enactment of new ones.

Whatever the solution to the bucketshop problem may be, there is evidently force to the Stock Exchange's contention that bucketshoppers are inadequately punished. Recently, attention was drawn to the case of one Jules Rabiner, who failed in 1922 owing about $500,000 to his customers. After being tried, convicted and sentenced, Rabiner recently appeared in the white light district. An indignant customer forced an investigation and it was found that after serving about three months, the bucketshop keeper had been paroled.

Not only have few of the bucket-shop cases of two years ago resulted in prison sentences, but many of the cases have not yet even come up for trial. In cases where convictions have been secured, usually the jail sentences have run less than three years.