GAMBLING IN FOOD PRODUCTS. 



It may be true, as Mr. B. P. Hutchinson says iu the North American Review for 

 October, that all operations iu the grains benefit the producer, but if he means, as would 

 appear from the context, that such operations as constitute ninety-nine per cent, of the 

 transactions upon the Boards of Trade then issue will be taken with this sweeping asser- 

 tion by i vast number of conservative people aside from the producers, who aje, prac- 

 tically, a unit in the belief that harm, and harm only, can result from such operations 

 whether they temporarily advance or depress prices. 



We are told that but for this form of speculation: 



"The farmer could only sell his grain to local buyers, who would be liable to get 

 full and stop buying, and then the farmer would be compelled to wait for customers; and 

 in the meantime a mortgage might be foreclosed on his farm, even while the wheat in his 

 bins would more than satisfy the mortgage if converted into cash." 



The farmer objects not to speculation so much as to that sort of speculation of 

 which Mr. Hutchinson might be termed "an instructive example." 



The farmer does not, and probably never has, objected to that speculation which, 

 when more grain was being marketed by the grower than was required by the consumer, 

 impels the buying of grain as an investment, places it in a warehouse to await that time 

 so sure to come when the volume of products being marketed by the grower shall be in- 

 sufticientto meet current requirements, the result being, in the abseuce of the short-seller, 

 such an advance in its value as to render the investment a remunerative one. 



Prior to the evolution of the short-seller such speculative buying took the surplus 

 grain which the farmer desired to sell and stored it for the consumer, a reasonable charge 

 being made for the laudable service. 



This may be termed speculation, but it is, as well, legitimate commerce, and is 

 wholly different from that speculation which finds its province in the buying and selling 

 of "options" and "puts and calls." The trouble with Jlr. Hutchinson and the class which 

 he represents is that they have no conception of commercial ethics and confound gam- 

 bling with speculation and commerce, desiring us to believe that gambling is both moral 

 and commendable, as well as necessary to the welfare of the comnmnity, and especially 

 to that of the farmer, whom they represent as likely to fall into irretrievable ruin but for 

 the kindly offices of the Board of Trade gambler, who puts prices up or down at will, and 

 at times — as just after the Hutchinson wheat corner of 1888 — renders it impossible to sell 

 grain, in the country, at any price. 



This fraternity is most solicitous lest the farmer shall be unable to sell bis wheat 

 and pay ofl' a mortgage that otherwise might be foreclosed, but they seem to forget the 

 Old saying so long current, "good as wheat," and that in no part of the United States is 

 it a very difficult matter to borrow money on wheat in the farm granary and that the one 

 farmer in danger of having bis farm sold under foreclosure is that one who has no wheat 

 or but an unsufflcient amount, in his granary. 



It is possible that the farmer may have to wait for customers, but certainly not 

 long while men continue to eat, and the speculator, be be of the laudable kind or of the 

 short-selling variety, does not add anything to the numlier of consumers or hasten the 

 consumption of the farmer's wheat by one minute, nor is it within his power to lessen 

 the consumption, although the short-seller can, and doubtless does, lessen the price 

 which the farmer receives by placing in competition quantities of flat products which 

 areas illimitable as are his greed and lack of commercial honesty. 



Although the writer has probably not seen as many years as the advocate of gam- 

 bling in food products, yet he has bought and sold much grain and has never seen a time 

 — except at the end of some such gambling operation as that of September, 1888, upon 

 which Mr. Hutchinson delights to expatiate — when grain was not readily salable, and 

 prior to the time when modern methods of short-selling and running corners came into 

 vogue prices were far more stable and fluctuations less destructive of legitimate profits. 

 Until mankind is able to live without food the farmer will have a market for all he can 

 produce, and instead of hereafter waiting for customers all the coming years are likely to 

 see the consumer hurrying up the farmer and trying to hasten the marketing ot crops 

 that will rarely reach to the end of the harvest year. 



