A farmer is running his hands through a bag of seed as his wife and daughter look on. Sowing season has come: it is time to plant this year’s wheat. He and an old man (his father?) walk slowly through a field, followed by a horse-driven plough.
A cut: in a cushy office, a businessman — the “Wheat King”, surrounded by his lackeys — ponders the best way to get rich. The next scene, in the stock market, is announced by a card: “IN THE WHEAT PIT / THE FINAL THRESHING HAS ARRIVED.” What is getting beaten, however, is not the wheat itself but the king’s opponents. He has cornered the market, allowing him to set the commodity’s price: we next see a bakery, where the cost of bread has jumped from 5 cents to 10, and children are going hungry.
The simultaneous action of this 1909 short film helped forge the reputation of a young D. Reportedly inspired in part by Charles Dickens’ narrative techniques, the director had developed a technique of parallel editing, allowing him to juxtapose different narratives to moral as well as dramatic ends. Intercut with the Wheat King’s feasting is the crushing poverty of the farm and the breadline.
A somewhat heavy-handed message — some hamminess among the _misérables_ doesn’t help — but one that probably bore repeating as the Gilded Age came to a close. The film, produced for the Biograph Company, was based on the writings of the Progressive journalist and novelist Frank Norris, particularly his short story “A Deal in Wheat” (1903). But the narrative was given additional piquancy by an eerily similar scheme put in place by the Chicago businessman James A.
Patten a few months earlier, which — as in the film — saw bread prices double. In _A Corner in Wheat_, the Wheat King takes his family for a tour of the grain elevators where their ill-gotten wealth is stored. As they set off, he gets held behind, as his assistant hands him a letter from his accountant.
We get to read it too: “Dear Sir:– You have control of the entire market of the world. Yesterday added $4,000,000 to your fortune.” Griffith actually underestimated what Patten’s profits would be: when the scheme finally collapsed in May 1909, the financier had made around $5,000,000 from his efforts — about $185,000,000 in today’s money. However, while Patten emerged unscathed from his dealings, the Wheat King meets his punishment, this one taken from an earlier novel by Norris, _The Octopus_ (1901).
Extract — continue reading at the source.
