The Organized Farmer

SPECULATIVE LOANS
PERTURB COOLIDGE

President and Cabinet Confer on Gambling Drain in Stock Market

FEAR HURT
TO BUSINESS

Banks Still Have Enough Money to Finance Nation, Mellon Tells Him

By John T. Lambert

In connection with the nation-wide investigation to determine the cause of the collapse of the wheat market President Coolidge recently discussed with his cabinet the advisability of urging bankers to call a halt upon the making of enormous loans to stock-market gambling.

It is said that a recent survey of the banks revealed that they hold $2,100,000,000 of brokers' paper, $100,000,000 more than in February 1920, when the high mark of war speculation was reached.

President Coolidge is concerned by the possibility that such vast loans for speculation will curb the ability of the banks to loan for real estate and general business development.

No Damage Done, Yet

Secretary of the Treasury Mellon advised the president that unusually heavy loans for speculation have been made "in some instances" but he said that business as a whole is firm.

Secretary Jardine has set an entire section of the agriculture department at work upon the wheat market investigation.

The rapid rise and sudden descent of wheat prices have caused in congress a renewed demand for national legislation to prevent gambling in the necessaries of life. In some quarters it has also provoked a demand for financial legislation that will place the country's commercial credit system in the hands of manufacturers and business men rather than under complete control of the bankers.

'Street Growers' Attacked

Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, who last fall declared that the wheat-price ascension was an artificial boom for political and speculative purposes, and who was in turn attacked as a "blatherskite and a demagogue," today issued a statement denouncing "the Liverpools and the Barneses who spend their winters in Florida and grow wheat in January on the pavements of Wall street." He said:

"Millions of dollars have been lost by the 'suckers' who were lured into the stock market by the combined efforts of the treasury department, the federal reserve system and the manipulators' fake propaganda of an alleged wheat shortage.

"So far as I have been able to ascertain, there never was a solid foundation for the propaganda that there existed a world wheat shortage that would cause the prices here to advance to $3 a bushel. That propaganda was circulated by the wheat speculators, who possibly thought they might help the majority party in the last campaign, but who knew at least that they would help themselves."