112 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



considered made. The buyer enters up the transaction on 

 a card at once and the seller does likewise. Then, in their 

 offices, thej each make up a clearing sheet. At the end 

 of the working day, each sends his sheet to the Clearing 

 House where it must be deposited by a specified time 

 early in the afternoon. As soon as the Clearing House has 

 accepted the transaction as recorded on the clearing sheets, 

 the particular buyer and seller part company so far as their 

 transaction is concerned, and have nothing more to do 

 with one another. The seller has contracted to deliver 

 5,000 bushels of May wheat, i. e., to deliver this amount 

 of wheat some time in May, on any working day. He 

 waits until the month of May arrives, and then when he 

 is ready, his 5,000 bushels of wheat being now stored in 

 a terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur, he 

 goes to the Clearing House and tells the Manager that he 

 has his wheat ready for delivery. The Manager then 

 looks through his books and finds some one who bought 

 5,000 bushels of May wheat and whose turn it is to take 

 delivery, the turns being ai-ranged in the order of buy- 

 ing. He then informs this buyer that such and such a 

 seller, our original seller, wishes to deliver 5,000 bushels 

 of May wheat to him and he informs the seller who it 

 is to whom his wheat is to be delivered. Then it is the 

 duty of the seller to deliver his wheat to the buyer with ^ 

 whom the Clearing House has brought him into contact, 

 at once. The Clearing House has then finished its deal- 

 ings with the buying and selling contracts here involved, 

 but the seller and buyer only end their business when the 

 seller delivers an invoice with the warehouse receipts for 

 the wheat and the buyer hands the seller a marked check 

 for the amount due. The receipts show that the wheat 



are deliverable thereon at arbitrary discounts of three cents and 

 eight cents respectively. This is a fair rule to protect sellers. Vide 

 C. F. Piper, loc. cit., p. 150. 



