"We the People"

Who are the speculators in Wall Street and on the commodity exchanges? Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, known to Wall Street as "We the People,"* last week announced that the speculators were indeed "We the People." The world's biggest securities and commodities brokerage house thought it had enough information in its files (150,000 customers) to correct the Truman Administration's impression that commodity speculators were a small bunch of cold-eyed moneybags profiting on human misery.

Merrill Lynch reported that its customers range from Steelworker Clifford Blackmore of Pittsburgh, "an active member of his C.I.O. local," to Cinemactor Ronald Colman. Customer Hugh L. Gary, Greenwood (Miss.) farmer, got into the market to hedge his cotton crop just as Chairman Harry A. Bullis of General Mills, Inc. hedged to protect General Mills inventories.

Around 41% of Merrill Lynch's customers had incomes of $5,000 or less; 30% made between $5,000 and $10,000, and only 29% were in the upper-income bracket. The biggest group was wage earners (19%). Executives came second (18%), housewives and widows third (16%). (Although Merrill Lynch did not specify, probably much less than 19% of its total business came from wage earners.) Merrill Lynch did not know whether or not its customers had made money. But Merrill Lynch had not done too well itself in 1947. Gross income of $22,377,582 was 24% under 1946; Net income before taxes was $1,827,952, down 71%.

* And also as The Thundering Herd, All This and Fenner Too, the Bureau of Missing Persons.

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