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Since the corner was not being turned with the ease expected, Messrs. Bishirgian & Howeson looked around for a way to bail out. They bought an old commodity house called James & Shakspeare, proceeded by a circuitous corporate route to transfer the shellac and pepper commitments to that firm, meantime selling James & Shakspeare stock to the public. In the prospectus they failed entirely to mention these shellac and pepper contracts.
Less than six months after the James & Shakspeare stock was marketed, the white pepper corner was ready for a grand smash. The price had been squeezed up from 18¢ per Ib. to 31¢. But a bumper crop was in prospect, and vast quantities of hitherto unsuspected pepper were being shaken out of China. Mr. Howeson made one attempt to sell a restriction scheme to pepper producing countries, but this time that method of bailing himself out did not work. "By February [1935]," said the Public Prosecutor, "the game was ended."
James & Shakspeare failed, wiping out stockholders and pulling down other commodity houses: Garabed Bishirgian, his counsel related, "is now without any money at all. Indeed, he is insolvent."
In charging the jury last week, Justice Sir Cyril Atkinson meticulously pointed out that the prospectus, not the corner, was the thing to be weighed. "If you can corner a commodity, corner it by all means," said the bewigged justice who, in a British law suit involving Chrysler Corp., observed from the Bench that Walter P. Chrysler's standard of business morality seemed "lamentably low" (TIME, Nov. 25).
"There is no law against it," Sir Cyril continued on the subject of corners. "You may think it isn't a very nice thing to do, but there is nothing legally wrong about it."