Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/612

 The Law of the Land. knew how the supper was to be paid for. The defence was that the supper was a wagering contract and plaintiff could not re cover. From one point of view it might appear that the captains bet the supper on the wager of the success or failure of the hunt. From another both parties must have been poor marksmen and the result of the hunt was going to depend upon dumb luck and not skill, otherwise it would have been held to be a game of skill and not chance. The court considered the situation from still another point of view. The landlord was not to gain or lose by the success or the de feat of either party. The supper was to be ready in any contingency. They might eat the supper or give it to the dogs. They were to receive so much food absolutely and at all costs and it was to be furnished for a consideration, hence the plaintiff was entitled to recover from defendant the cost of the supper for the whole party. It must have been a poor sort of a crowd, or a poor hunt, or the supper must have been awful poor, that gentlemen would dispute about the pay ing of same. The wagering contracts we have been speaking of have been the simpler ones, the determination of which do not seem to have given the courts much trouble. The law of the land has been against the gentlemen try ing to do business beyond the courts of honor specially designed by them for the recovery of their contracts. When it comes to gam bling transactions of the stock market the questions to be determined by the courts are more difficult and intricate and call for many nice distinctions. The underlying principle seems simple enough that a purchase of shares of stock or commodities without the intention to deliver or receive them is a gaming contract, and such a wager as is not enforceable at law. The inventive genius of our exchanges, however, continually create new situations of putting the old gaming wine into new bottles, so that the law of the

573

land must be resorted to, to label the new concoction. The language of the street is largely sym bolic. Dealings in futures suggest a riddle of the Sphinx. Futures being, however, con tracts of sale to be delivered in the future, courts declare them to be all right if there is a bona fide intention to deliver, and all wrong without such intention. A put, a call, a straddle and a sale short, smack of that lingo that tells of an ante, a straddle, a raise, a call and a bluff. A put is the privilege of delivering or not delivering the thing sold, and resembles a dropping out on a poor hand or a raise on a full hand, and is a wager or gambling contract always. A call is the privilege of call ing or not calling for the delivery of the thing bought, and is suggestive of a call to show hands and is a wager always, being contrary to good morals and public policy. A straddle, or double privilege of a put and a call, secures to the holder the right to buy of or sell to another something within a cer tain time at a certain price. If it is an at tempt to cover losses by betting you will lose where you had previously bet you would win and no delivery is contemplated, it is a wager. If, however, it means no more than an option which may be completed by actual and intended delivery, it is not necessarily void. A sale short is more or less of a bluff, for it is a sale of that which the seller does not own or possess, but which he expects to buy in at a lower price than that for which he sells. Courts declare selling short is not ipso facto a wager, for the element of delivery may have been intended and contemplated at all times and at all hazards. If so, it is legal; if not, it is a gamble. A unique invention of the street has been margin. How other games of chance have existed in the same civilization with it is wonderful, for it is ridiculous to conceive of gentlemen indulging in games of chance re quiring chips of a certain face value when