CHAPTER V 



" THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOSED SHUTTERS " 



Knock, knock, knock 1 Who's there, i' the name of 

 Beelzebub I Here's a farmer . . . 



Macbeth. 



WHEN wheat ceased to be grown for local needs , 

 and overflowed upon the markets of the world, 

 becoming a factor in finance, arenas where its j 

 destiny was decided were established in the large j/ 

 centres of trade. In these basins of commerce the 

 never-ending flow concentrated and wheeled for a short 

 space before in re-directed currents it rolled on its way 

 to ocean ports. Here, according to the novelists, 

 frantic men were sucked into the golden eddies, their 

 cries strangled and their fate forgotten even as they 

 were engulfed by the Leviathan with which they adven- 

 tured; or they emerged with eyes bloodshot, voices 

 gone and clothes torn, successful speculators of a day. 

 Perhaps the general reader is more familiar with these 

 mad scenes of " The Pit," as the trading floor is called, 

 than with the steadily turning marketing machinery of 

 which they are but a penumbra. 



The moilern- grain exchange is much more than a , 

 mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real pur- ; 

 pose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It 

 is a great information bureau of world happenings 

 where every item of news concerning the wheat in any 



73 



