288 PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION. 



low prices tend to increase consumption, high prices only 

 serve to retard it. About 1883 new factors in the buying 

 and selling of coffee appeared, coffee exchanges been 

 opened in Havre, Hamburg and New York, which created 

 large transactions in " options," some of them becoming 

 enormous in their magnitude, and against which consider- 

 able quantities of coffee must be held, the operations for 

 future deliveries reaching as high as 22,000,000 bags in 

 1887. This enormous increase in the transactions of 

 that year was due entirely to a short crop report and to 

 the active speculation based thereon. The continued 

 increase in consumption and the increased demand for 

 stocks held against the trading in options not being met 

 by a corresponding increase in the production of the 

 article, added to the serious injury to the crops in Java 

 by leaf disease and in Brazil by blight, having still 

 further disturbed the relations between the established 

 laws of supply and demand. 



