MKDi.l YAL AND MoDKRN PRODUCE MARK! -.IS 837 



as it afforded the possibility of using the various, future contracts 

 without the dangers that had been fully revealed by Dutch ex- 

 perience. Finally, in the grain trade of western United States, 

 the term contract was developed into an elaborately developed 

 instrument that seems to represent the final form. 



In the Middle Ages the law of the market insisted upon the 

 physical presence of the goods to be bought and sold. The 

 market could deal only in such supplies as were physically 

 visible. The inconvenience and dangers of such limitations 

 became serious with the rise of wholesale marketing. The 

 essential interdependence of producing and consuming markets 

 could not be recognized adequately until each market was made 

 competent to trade in terms of the whole supply to be found in 

 the entire group of related markets. The stability of the large 

 markets was greatly increased by making it possible to buy ami 

 sell not merely the goods physically present, but goods in transit 

 and goods actually in the hands of traders on another market. 

 The significance of this interdependence of markets has become 

 doubly clear since the great improvements in communication 

 have made it possible for dealers to engage in operations simul- 

 taneously in widely separated markets. The full development 

 of this system of trading has been confined to the period subse- 

 quent to the opening of the Atlantic cable, but ,the origin of the 



m reaches farther back into the past. This modern I 

 of trading rests upon two types of instrument : the future con- 

 already described ; and symbols of property, such as bills 

 of lading, dock warrants, and warehouse certificates. The 

 forms of future trading have been discussed already, and the 

 necessity of other instruments can be clearly perceived in the 

 tendency of Dutch speculation to degenerate into gambling on 



The new legal doctrines which were to complete the technical 

 foundation of the modern speculative system appear first in the 

 law merchant and the- Fn-lish decisions associated with it. 

 Neither the bill of lading nor the dock warrant uas r 

 hut both instruments acquired nev. < ourse 



of the eightc nally mere receipts of goods 



