Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/239

Rh feet across, but it reaches clear down to Hell. And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he's buying something that the other fellow hasn't got. When a man sells, he's selling something that he hasn't got. And it's been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit. When a speculator wins he don't stop till he loses, and when he loses he can't stop till he wins.

You have been in the packing business long enough now to know that it takes a bull only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if you'll believe me when I tell you that they can skin a bear just as quick on 'Change, you won't have a Board of Trade Indian using your pelt for a rug during the long winter months.

Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There's nothing in it. The poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires.