It is here that the curious foregather--good people from every walk of life except the grain business. The tourist who is "just passing through your beautiful city" and has heard that Winnipeg has the largest primary wheat market in the world--the tourist drops in to see the sights. Friend Husband is there, pretending to be very bored by these things while fulfilling his promise to take Friend Wife "some day when there's something doing." Young girls who only know that bulls hate anything red and that bears hug people to death--they are there, thrilled by the prospect of what they are about to witness with but a very vague idea of what it will be. A dear old lady from the quiet eddies of some sheltered spot has been brought in by the rest of her party to see "goin's on" of which she does not approve because gambling is a well-known sin. She is somewhat reassured by noting a few seats away a man who wears the garb of a clergyman; presently he will take notes for his forthcoming sermon on "The Propinquity of Temptation and Its Relation to the Christian Life." The two young women who whisper together in the corner have been reading stockmarket stories in the magazines and they are wondering which of the traders, assembling on the floor below, will have his coat and collar torn off and which will break down and give vent to those "big, dry man-sobs" when his fortune is wrecked!
Not the least of the sights at the Grain Exchange is the Visitors' Gallery!
Two tanned farmers are discussing quotations and general conditions in a matter-of-fact way. War demands, the unfavorable United States Government report and rumors of black rust are making for a bullish condition. Cables are up and the market promises to be wild this morning. The gong will go in five minutes.
"The Pit" is out in the middle of the floor. There is an octagonal platform, raised a couple of feet from the floor level. In the centre of this platform three wide steps descend to floor level again; so that the traders standing on the different steps are able to see over one another's heads and note each other's bids. On the west side of the Pit is an elevated, built-in desk like those seen in court-rooms, somewhat resembling an old-fashioned pulpit; here three men sit throughout the session. One keeps his fingers on the switch-box which operates the big clock on the north wall where the fluctuations of the trading are flashed on a frosted dial in red-light figures. At his left sits a second man whose duty it is to record the bidding on an official form for the purpose. At the right is a telegraph operator who sends the record of the trading as it occurs to other big Exchanges--Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, etc.