118 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



ber wheat in eighths of one cent. If the price was $1.93 

 and /s, the Ys was lighted up with red, if $1.93 and %, 

 then the % was lighted up, and so forth, so that one could 

 read off the price at which December wheat had just been 

 sold. The wheat-clock is manipulated by the recorder, a 

 grave man who sits at a high desk overlooking the wheat- 

 pit, and who, with the help of two assistants, keeps an 

 accurate account of what trading is done by the often 

 frantic men down below. He it is who interprets the un- 

 known language of which I have spoken, who by electric 

 switches records the fluctuations in the price of sales on the 

 wheat-clock, and who provides the trading statistics for the 

 reports of the Exchange. 



XXVII. The Effect of the War on the Grain Trade 



The influence of the war upon the grain trade of Canada 

 and the United States has been profound. Indeed, it has 

 resulted in nothing less than a revolution in the normal 

 methods of marketing grain. This subject has been dealt 

 with at some length by the three last Presidents of the 

 Winnipeg Grain Exchange in their annual addresses, and 

 these addresses have formed the chief source of the writer's 

 information for what follows. 



The outstanding feature of the marketing of grain in 

 I^orth America during the years of peace was the develop- 

 ment of the grain exchanges. Their organization was due 

 to commercial evolution and they were not created by gov- 

 ernments. They supplied an economic want. It was the 

 grain exchanges that found the way to collect grain at 

 country points, assemble it in vast quantities at the ter- 

 minal points, and distribute it among the mills of this 

 continent and the mills of Europe; and it was the grain 

 exchanges that developed the s^'stem of insurance against 

 fl.uctuation in prices known as future trading, that made 



