But they are not honest, because in the large majority of such transactions the prices are “rigged,” that is to say, the bandits who run the shop run it to win and not to lose, and “fix” the prices accordingly. The player is thus required to give odds by laying 3 to 4 not on what the price of a stock will be, which is ruinous enough in all conscience, but on what his opponent will choose to make it! Since we are talking of gambling now and not of any real transaction, we may as well adopt the vernacular of the fraternity and say plainly that the bucket-shop man holds the stakes, cuts, shuffles, and deals the cards, and then telegraphs you what your hand is. And the loser at this joyous pastime thinks he has been robbed by Wall Street. The game works against the player in yet another sense, as the _Wall Street Journal_ points out, for when you buy stock you are entitled not merely to the stock itself, but to all the privileges which it carries, and not the least of these privileges is the effect which your purchase will have on the market. That is to say, if ten thousand purchasers throughout the country should buy even small amounts of a certain stock on a given day, the combined effect of all these purchases would undoubtedly lift its price on the Stock Exchange, and thus we see that each buyer’s action carries with it a privilege of no inconsiderable proportions. But the keeper of the bucket-shop does not buy any stock for you at all; he merely makes a bet with you as to what the price will be--and so, having robbed you of your money, he now robs you of the privilege which goes with your money, since the alleged purchase of a million shares of your stock in bucket-shops would not have the slightest influence on its price at the Stock Exchange. The man who has saved money by his own enterprise and thrift is a fool if he gives his savings to mining “bonanzas” through the itching palms of promoters, or to bucket-shops through the lure of slender margins. The very fact that promoters always play upon the theory that distance will lend enchantment to the view, and solicit their funds solely by means of prospectuses, should be a sufficient warning to the most credulous. A word to his banker, or a letter to any responsible institution in Wall Street, will supply him with the necessary information and save him from the possibility of loss.