The more organized methods of speculation which prevail in these times, cause the public to be mulcted of their money in a much more wholesale manner than was the case formerly. They are now driven like sheep, or rather enticed into a pen, and there mercilessly squeezed until they are glad, like some of the players at Homberg have been, to have their third-class fare paid home. A number of brokers or jobbers, or both, in the markets will be instructed to run a stock up, after a goodly number of bears have been decoyed in by a gently falling price from day to day, seasoned with unfavourable reports. Those who are able to command a sight of the jobber’s books, know of course exactly the position of affairs, and the price is rigged until the weak speculators for the fall are simply frightened in. This is done upon even a more extensive scale in the opposite direction, for the simple reason that the general public as speculators, are bulls by nature. Bear operations seem to go against the grain of the average man who acquires a first taste for speculation, probably by possessing some amount of stock which improves in price after he has bought. Money thus easily made, as it seems to be, out of nothing, encourages other purchases with a view to resale before the settling day arrives. Thus small figures grow to large ones; and small profits, in frequent attempts to multiply them, usually end in large losses. A good stock, or the shares of a good company, that has long been discredited from a cause which may be suddenly removed, has frequently been used for literally flaying the public when they have rushed in as bulls. A memorable case in point was the rigging of the shares of the Erie Railway Company. Upon the occasion of the assassination of Fisk, jun., the shares were run up and the public enticed in by daily advancing figures far above the actual merits of the shares, from a dividend point of view. Numbers of persons were induced to believe the price would range high from that moment. The quotation subsequently declined, and one by one the unhappy bulls were disgusted into taking their losses, whilst those who had rigged the market were following them down as bears, and making a fine thing out of the affair. The same game was played with the public when Jay Gould was ousted from the presidency of the Company, when the price was run up to 57½, and gradually went back, even as low at one time as to 28, afterwards recovering to about 50. As compared with the professional tricksters who manage these riggings of the markets, even the best of the outside speculators, who have had long experience and think they can stand on one side and profit by the gullibility of the public, discover themselves frequently the wrong way, when the course of the market for some time at length reveals unmistakably the drift of the experts behind the scenes. The man who must speculate should be early in,