Business & Finance: In Praise of Speculation

"I am a speculator," wrote Arthur William Cutten in last week's Saturday Evening Post. "Speculators have been of immeasurable value to the development of civilization. ... I am not boasting when I say that I have traded more heavily than any other individual who ever stood in the wheat pit.* This is the fact. In stating it I am establishing my right to be heard along with other men, who only theorize about it."

Bull Cutten, who has been an independent trader for 26 years and has never lost as much money as he...