Financial History Issue 130 (Summer 2019) | Page 11

EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE The Pit necessitated an extended stay in Chicago where his former Berkeley classmate, George Gibbs, tried to help Norris understand the intricate workings of the Chicago Board of Trade. Norris biographers Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. and Jesse S. Crissler wrote, “Not since he was a student of mathematics at Berkeley 2 did he find himself so intellectually challenged as he was when trying to comprehend the complex machinations of speculation in commodities like wheat.” Gibbs wrote, “While [Norris] was in Chicago securing the necessary informa- tion in regard to the book called The Pit I was with him constantly and he was unable to understand the short side of the market and how anybody could sell a thousand or a million bushels of wheat when he did not possess them. I tried in many ways to make this question clear to him, but it was many weeks before he could gain the right conception of short selling 3 in the wheat market.” However, an unconfident Norris, who moved to New York after completing his research in Chicago, continued to glean information from Edwin Lefevre, who’s recently published Wall Street Sto- ries touched on the kinds of market spec- ulation Norris wanted to write about. Business journalist George Moulson also helped Norris with the technical aspects of the novel. According to Moulson, Norris “…had spent days watching brokers in the Chicago pit, he was a writer and under- stood very little about the speculative end of markets.” Moulson reviewed chapter after chapter, helping with the technical details. He recalled how vividly Norris, “… portrayed the scenes, endowing my matter of fact, technical information with life and soul and how rapidly and fluidly the vari- ous chapters were composed during the intervals between our sessions. This went on for several months. He revised each chapter after our evening talks, so that the progress was consistent and timed to coincide with the progress of the market- ing season. His grasp of the whole subject was amazing, and no effort was spared on his part in securing such thorough famil- iarity with a broker’s psychology as would make his characters true to life.” Norris Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimaginative though he was, had long since conceived the notion of some great, some resistless force within the Board of Trade Building that held the tide of the streets within its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it forth. Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of roaring waters spun and thundered, sucking in the life tides of the city, sucking them in as into the mouth of some tremendous cloaca, the maw of some colossal sewer; then vomiting them forth again, spewing them up and out, only to catch them in the return eddy and suck them in afresh.   Thus it went, day after day. Endlessly, ceaselessly the Pit, enormous, thundering, sucked in and spewed out, sending the swirl of its mighty central eddy far out through the city’s channels. Terrible at the centre, it was, at the circumference, gentle, insidious and persuasive, the send of the flowing so mild, that to embark upon it, yielding to the influence, was a pleasure that seemed all devoid of risk. But the circumference was not bounded by the city. All through the Northwest, all through the central world of the Wheat the set and whirl of that innermost Pit made itself felt; and it spread and spread and spread till grain in the elevators of Western Iowa moved and stirred and answered to its centripetal force, and men upon the streets of New York felt the mysterious tugging of its undertow engage their feet, embrace their bodies, overwhelm them, and carry them bewildered and unresisting back and downwards to the Pit itself. — Frank Norris so appreciated Moulson’s help that he thanked him in The Pit’s Preface. 4 Norris based his tale on an actual attempt to corner wheat that was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Joseph Leiter, a wealthy Chicagoan, was only 29 in 1897 when he attempted to corner the inter- national wheat market. According to his obituary, he “…lost $10,000,000 of his father’s money.” 5 Leiter saw that a com- bination of a weak wheat harvest and the rising threat of war with Spain would pro- duce ideal conditions for cornering wheat. He began buying wheat futures contracts when wheat was selling at $0.73 per bushel and eventually drove the price up to $1.85. The corner eventually failed because Leiter tried to hold on to it too long, even after it was clear that a bumper wheat crop was in the making. Philip Armour, who had been bearish on wheat, battled Leiter’s corner, and he worked with Leiter’s father to stabilize the market after the corner failed. In Norris’s account, Curtis Jadwin, a successful Chicago real estate mogul, is lured into the wheat market by his broker, who offers Jadwin a piece of a sure-deal short in wheat. Jadwin resists at first say- ing, “…I had sort of made up my mind to keep out of speculation… A man gets into this game, and into it and into it, and before you know he can’t pull out—and he don’t want to.” His broker, Sam Gretry, prevails upon him telling Jadwin, “…this ain’t speculation. You can see for yourself how sure it is.” Jadwin gives in and sells a million bushels of wheat short. He makes money on the deal, but, as he feared, he becomes hooked on wheat speculation. Jadwin continues to be bearish for quite some time, but when he realizes that the price of wheat will soon bottom out, he changes strategies. “Sam,” says Jadwin to his broker, “the time is come for a great www.MoAF.org  |  Summer 2019  |  FINANCIAL HISTORY  9