A Deal in Wheat And Other Stories [Annotated]: Frank Norris

The story A Deal in Wheat was first published as a serial in 1902 before being published posthumously as part of this collection the following year. It is a five-part story about wheat speculation at the Chicago Board of Trade. As wheat prices fall in the midst of an economic feud between two influential speculators, the story's protagonist, a wheat farmer from Kansas, loses his farm. The book ends with the farmer relocating to Chicago, where he is denied free bread due to rising wheat prices. Influenced by naturalism, which the author contrasted with realism. The latter he found to be too superficial, honing in on the "accuracy" of surface details, while naturalism he understood to dramatize the "truth" to expose the relations between people from different segments and classes underlying the everyday experiences of life.PlotI. The first of the five sections of the story, entitled "The Bear- Wheat at Sixty-Two", takes place in rural Kansas. Sam Lewiston leaves his wife, Emma, home on the ranch while he goes into town one last time to try to sell his wheat to Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers before being forced out of the market. At sixty-two cents a bushel, Lewiston can no longer afford to raise wheat and must take a job with his wife's brother in Chicago.II. The next section, "The Bull- Wheat at a Dollar-Ten", introduces the two main players of the Chicago-run wheat business, the bear and the bull: Truslow and Hornung. When Truslow had let the price fall to sixty-two cents, Hornung had almost run him out of business. Instead, Mr. Gates makes a deal with Truslow, on behalf of Hornung, to sell him one hundred thousand bushels for export at $1.10 each.III. Hornung has grown to dominate wheat sales at $1.50 a bushel. One day in "The Pit", a mysterious man named Kennedy sells one thousand bushels to three of Hornung's men: Going, Kimbark, and Merriam. They get word that a total of twenty-five thousand bushels are being sold in Chicago by someone other than Hornung. Hornung instructs them to continue buying but, with The Bear supposedly out of the market, they do not know whom they are buying from.IV. The fourth section, "The BeltLine", takes place in Hornung's home. His broker, Billy, and a detective named Cyrus Ryder are there to discuss the now eighty thousand bushels he has purchased. Ryder reveals that the bushels are the same ones that Truslow had purchased to export. He had been shuttling them around the city on trains, making it appear as if they had just arrived. Hornung laughs upon finding out he has been cheated and decides to further raise the price.V. The final section of the story, "The Bread Line", describes Sam Lewiston's life in Chicago. He stands in the bread line with many other poor, hungry workers who rely on the bakery's nightly giveaways, but the price of wheat has put too much of a strain on the bakery. Lewiston manages to find work as a street cleaner and climb the rankings to success but, because of his experiences as a farmer and a worker, his resentment towards the operators of the wheat business will not die.