At the beginning of the boom, the value of shares in a certain rubber company was 19s. each; during the boom the great demand for these shares forced their exchange price up to 70s. each. Suppose, therefore, someone had bought 4,000 of them at the 19s. price; if he was lucky enough, or smart enough, to sell them when they were fetching 70s. each, he would clear, roughly, about £10,000, after paying commission to a member of the Stock Exchange whom he had to employ to carry out the deal for him. Again, on a certain night shares in another company were selling at 27s. each. The next morning some favourable remarks about this company’s rubber plantations appeared in the newspapers, and so anxious were people to get shares in the concern that they at once offered 35s. apiece for them. Therefore, people who had bought these shares during the previous afternoon had the chance of selling them at a profit of 8s. apiece within a few hours. Under ordinary conditions, people buy shares with a view to holding them, and receiving a proportion of the profits made by the enterprise in which they have taken a partnership. During the Rubber Boom, no one bought shares with this idea. The game, as I have told you, was to buy at to-day’s price, utterly regardless of whether it was a fancy figure, and trust to luck that very soon there would be some other people so anxious to get the shares that they would be willing to give a much bigger price for them. The Boom provided a fine opportunity for cheating, of which some people took advantage. The public were invited to buy so-called rubber plantations, that were mere tracts of jungle. And genuine plantations were offered to them for a sum much above their value. No one made any inquiries as to what he was buying--all that anyone wanted at the moment was a piece of paper which set forth that he was the owner of some rubber shares, so that he could sell his rights to someone else at a profit. But on the whole, seeing how big was the chance for cheating, the public were not made victims by many unscrupulous folk. They were their own worst enemies during the boom, for by their mad eagerness to gamble in rubber shares, they forced up the price of shares in the many thoroughly genuine plantations to a value that was out of proportion to the profits which could be made on the rubber produced--at any rate, for some time to come.