CORNER, a commercial term used in Eng land and the United States to signify the con trol of so large a supply of an industrial or commercial product or of so much of a stock that the market value of the commodity held is tremendously advanced, and those who have made contracts to deliver the stock or com modity in question must buy at the prices set by the pool. So the actual difference between the manceuvre of the corner-man and the nor mal effort to bull prices by controlling supply is that the corner is based upon knowledge of contracts made for future delivery by those who are not in present possession of the stock. In stock exchange parlance a °corner* is procured where somebody succeeds in buying for further delivery more property of a given kind than is possible for the seller to deliver before the day of the maturity of the contract. The term is used in boards of trade, etc., to desig nate the condition arising when a much greater quantity of any given commodity is sold for future delivery within a givenperiod than can be purchased in the market. The buyers, who are called in the slang of the exchange °longs,* then insist on delivery, and by these means suc ceed in running up prices to a fictitious point, by which deals are run out between the dealers, or by exchanges, or, where the person insists upon it, by actual delivery. A very large majority of these transactions are no doubt merely speculative, but many of them are actu ally purchases for manufacturers and exporters. Successful corners depend then not only on a thorough understanding of where the control of the commodity in question lies, lest another holder at the critical moment be able to under sell the would-be corner-man, but on the will ingness of the buyer to keep his contracts at no matter what cost. In other words, if the corner-man is too greedy and demands too high a price, buyers may smash the corner by refusing to keep their contracts, a procedure with a certain amount of poetic justice in it, at least when the members of the corner have gained control of the supply which they are to rebuy from the contractors. Legally defined, a
°corner* is the securing of such control of the immediate supply of any product as to enable those operating the corner to advance arbitrarily the price of the product. It is created or dinarily by operations on boards of trade or stock exchanges, and by dealings in options and fixtures. A °corner* when accomplished by a confederation to raise or depress prices and operate on the market is a conspiracy if the means employed are unlawful. Cereals and cot ton, because of the large amount of future trading done in them, are favorite fields for the corner-man; but the exact amount of a year's crop and the thorough location of such holdings make the manmuvre particularly dan gerous. Typical °corners* of ancient history include: Joseph's buying and storing the corn of Egypt, so that Call countries came to Joseph to buy corn* (Gen. xli, 57); and the Athenian corner ingrain, orated against by Lysias (d. 380 s.c.). Many of the worst financial panics in the United States have been the results of attempts, usually unsuccessful, to corner the gold market. The greatest of these was that which culminated in Black Friday, 24 Sept. 1869, through the operations of Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr. Consult Boutwell, G. L., 'The Mint Bill and the Crime of
and
Friday' (Chaps. 34-35 in Vol. 2,