Financial History Issue 130 (Summer 2019) | Page 12

EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
The Pit, as it appeared in the January 24, 1903 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.
big change,” and he instructs Gretry to
begin buying wheat contracts. Eventually,
as wheat conditions worsen, Jadwin, real-
izing a corner is possible, begins his epic
battle with the bears led by Calvin Crooke.
As the battle intensifies and Jadwin
becomes more obsessed with his corner 6 , he
begins to lose a grip on reality. He neglects
his wife and spends most of his time at his
office planning his next move. When his
wife asks him to take an evening off and
go to the theatre with her, he retorts, “You
think I am willfully doing this! You don’t
know, you haven’t a guess. I corner the
wheat! Great heavens, it is the wheat that
has cornered me! The corner made itself. I
happened to stand between two sets of cir-
cumstances, and they made me do what I’ve
done. I couldn’t get out of it now, with all
the good will in the world. Go to the theatre
to-night with you and the Cresslers? Why,
old girl, you might as well ask me to go to
Jericho.” Clearly, the corner is beginning
to weigh on Jadwin, but he continues to
believe he has the situation under control.
Recalling his initial entry into
speculation, Jadwin remembers his sus-
picions and fear. “Now,” wrote Norris,
“he had discovered that there were in
him powers, capabilities, and a breadth
of grasp hitherto unsuspected. He could
control the Chicago wheat market; and
the man who could do that might well call
himself ‘great,’ without presumption. He
knew that he over-topped them all—Gre-
try, the Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneer-
ing Bears, all the men of the world of the
Board of Trade. He was stronger, bigger,
shrewder than them all.”
In this foolish state of arrogance, Jad-
win believes he can hold his corner even
in the face of bumper wheat crops, but
his corner fails spectacularly, leaving him
destitute and mentally unhinged. As a
deluge of wheat hits the market, Jadwin’s
corner comes crashing down. In a final
act of desperation, he rushes into the pit
himself, as if his mere presence can stem
the inevitable. As the floor traders cheer
Jadwin’s demise, Crooke, the bear leader,
is heard to say, “They can cheer now, all
they want. They didn’t do it. It was the
10    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Summer 2019  | www.MoAF.org
wheat itself that beat him; no combination
of men could have done it—go on, cheer,
you damn fools! He was a bigger man than
the best of us.”
In the next edition of Financial History,
we will explore timeless concepts in The
Pit that make it a relevant read today. We
will also examine Norris’s life and death,
his attitude towards women and his anti-
Semitic remarks that have caused him to
fall out of favor today. 
Brian Grinder is a professor at Eastern
Washington University and a member
of Financial History’s editorial board.
Dr. Dan Cooper is the president of Active
Learning Technologies.
Sources
Crisler, Jesse S. and Joseph R. Mcelrath. Frank
Norris Remembered. Tuscaloosa, AL: Uni-
versity of Alabama Press. 2013.
Fraser, Steve. Every Man a Speculator: A His-
tory of Wall Street in American Life. New
York: HarperCollins. 2005.
“Joseph Leiter, Financier, Dies at Age of 63.”
Chicago Daily Tribune. 1932.