The operations of corner makers are confined principally to goods which are dealt in upon commercial exchanges. One evident reason for this is that the vast purchases and sales, which are necessary in the formation of a corner are impossible without the facilities afforded by an exchange. It must be said, too, that the plain truth is that our principal commercial exchanges, while they do serve certain useful purposes, are yet practically devoted chiefly to speculation. This, simmered down to its essence, means that the business of the speculators is to bet on the future prices of the articles dealt in,—a game in which the largest players are able to influence prices to accord with their bets, and hence have their "lamb" opponents at an obvious disadvantage. The evil of this sort of commercial gambling is recognized by practical men of every class; but its cure is yet to be effected.
A sort of business allied both to trade and transportation is the business of storage or warehousing, and this has recently shown some interesting cases of monopoly.
The owners of warehouses along the Brooklyn waterfront combined their business in January, 1888, and doubled their rates for storage. In the testimony of one of the members of this trust, before the New York Legislative Committee, he said: "We want to destroy competition all we can. It is a bad thing." The owners of grain elevators at Buffalo, N. Y., have long combined to exact higher prices for the transfer of grain than would have prevailed were free competition the rule. At the session of 1887 the New York Legislature took the bull by the horns and enacted a law fixing a maximum rate for elevator charges; a statute which was based on the popular demand for its enactment, but is hard to accord with the principles of a free government.