The Arcades Project - Operi

The Arcades Project - Operi The Arcades Project - Operi

07.04.2013 Views

On the floor of the Stock Exchange, as on OUI' parquet, You come take your chances, wager what YOll may: Hed and hlack at trente et quarante, rise and fall at the Bourse, Of every loss and every gain are equally the source, For if playing the market is just like our roulette, Why proscribe the latter and the former abet? Louis Bourlier, Stances it l'occasion de La Loi qui supprime La ferme des jeux; Addressees ii I" Chmnbre (Paris, 1837),

could withstand the exorbitant commissions of the stockbrokers . . . . On the Rhine, there are two gambling establishments (at Homburg and Wiesbaden) where they conduct a game of trente et quurunt'e in which a slight commission of 621/2 centimes for every 100 francs is deducted in advance . ... This is . .. one thirtysecond of the stockbroker's commission and the earnings combined. Trente et quurunte is played for red and black, just as on the Stock Market one plays for the rise and fall, with the difference that the odds are always exactly the same with the former and any kind of fraud is impossible-the weak, there, being not at all at the mercy of thc strong" . [07a,7] In the provinces, speculation on the Stock Exchange was dependent on " getting news from Paris ... about the fluctuations in the exchange of the most important stocks . ... Special couriers and carrier pigeons had to serve this end, and one of the favorite methods in a France that, in those days, was dotted with windmills was to transmit signals from mill to mill. If the window of one of these mills was opened, that meant a rise in prices, and the signal was taken up by nearby mills and passed on; if the window remained closed, then a fall in prices was indicated. And the news traveled in this way, from mill to mill, out of the capital and into the provinces." The Blanc brothers, however, preferred to make use of the optical telegraph, which was legally reserved for the government. "One fine day in 1834, at the request of an agent for Blanc, a Parisian telegraphist in an official telegram sent an H to Bordeaux, which was supposed to indicate a rise in stocks. In order to mark this letter, and also to guard against discovery, he inserted after the H a symbol denoting error." Difficulties cropped up along this route, and so the Blancs combined this method with another. ·"If, for example, the French stocks at 3 percent showed an advance of at least 25 centimes, then the Paris agent for the Blancs, a certain Gosmand, sent a packet containing gloves to the telegraph official in Tout's, whose name was Guibout, and who was prudently addressed on the parcel as a manufacturer of gloves and stockings. But if there was a decline of at least the same amount, then Gosmand sent stockings or neckties. The address written on this packet carried a letter or a numher which Guihout then immedi­ ately dispatched, together with the error symbol, in an official telegram to Bordeaux." This syst.em functioned for about two years. Reported in the Gazette des Tribunaux of 1837. Egon Caesar Conte Corti, Der ZalLberer 'von Hornburg lLnd Monte Carlo (Leipzig

On the floor of the Stock Exchange, as on OUI' parquet,<br />

You come take your chances, wager what YOll may:<br />

Hed and hlack at trente et quarante, rise and fall at the Bourse,<br />

Of every loss and every gain are equally the source,<br />

For if playing the market is just like our roulette,<br />

Why proscribe the latter and the former abet?<br />

Louis Bourlier, Stances it l'occasion de La Loi qui supprime La ferme des jeux;<br />

Addressees ii I" Chmnbre (Paris, 1837),

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!