Westward with the Prince of Wales by W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas) Newton

Author:W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas) Newton [Newton, W. Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Travel
ISBN: 4064066223151
Google: xn9FnwEACAAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2021-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

IV

The Prince made the usual round of the usual program during his stay, but his visit to the Grain Exchange was an item that was unique.

He drove on Wednesday, September 10th, to this dramatic place, where brokers, apparently in a frenzy, shout and wave their hands, while the price of grain sinks and rises like a trembling balance at their gestures and shouts.

The pit at which all these hustling buyers and sellers are gathered has all the romantic qualities of fiction. It is, as far as I am concerned, one of the few places that live up to the written pictures of it, for it gave me the authentic thrill that had come to me when I first read of the Chicago wheat transactions in Frank Norris's novel, "The Pit."

The Prince drove to the Grain Exchange and was whirled aloft to the fourth story of the tall building. He entered a big hall in which babel with modern improvements and complications reigned.

In the centre of this room was the pit proper. It has nothing of the Stygian about it. It is a hexagon of shallow steps rising from the floor, and descending on the inner side.

On these steps was a crowd of super-men with voices of rolled steel. They called out cabalistic formulae of which the most intelligible to the layman sounded something like:

"May—eighty-three—quarter."

Cold, high and terrible voices seemed to answer:

"Taken."

Hundreds of voices were doing this, amid a storm of cross shoutings, and under a cloud of tossing hands, that signalled with fingers or with papers. Cutting across this whirlpool of noise was the frantic clicking of telegraph instruments. These tickers were worked by four emotionless gods sitting high up in a judgment seat over the pit.

They had unerring ears. They caught the separate quotations from the seething maelstrom of sound beneath them, sifted the completed deal from the mere speculative offer in uncanny fashion, and with their unresting fingers ticked the message off on an instrument that carried it to a platform high up on one of the walls.

On this platform men in shirt-sleeves prowled backwards and forwards—as the tigers do about feeding time in the Zoo. They, too, had super-hearing. From little funnels that looked like electric light shades they caught the tick of the messages, and chalked the figures of the latest prices as they altered with the dealing on the floor upon a huge blackboard that made the wall behind them.

At the same time the gods on the rostrum were tapping messages to the four corners of the world. Even Chicago and Mark Lane altered their prices as the finger of one of these calm men worked his clicker.

When the Prince entered the room the gong sounded to close the market, and amid a hearty volume of cheering he was introduced to the pit, and some of its intricacies were explained to him. The gong sounded again, the market opened, and a storm of shouting broke over him, men making and accepting deals over his head.

Intrigued

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