80 GAMBLING IN FOOD PRODUCTS. 



specially grateful for the use of such sums as the distributors use in the furtherance of 

 their business. 



Would it not be well if other members of the coummunity should recognize the 

 'act that the farmer employes a vast capital in his business? Would it not also be well 

 if the fact was more generally recognized that when the capital of the farmer is unprofit- 

 ably employed, by reason of inadequate prices for his products, every interest suffers and 

 stagnation pervades the economic fabric? 



It is beyond controversy that the prosperity of the nation, as a whole, waits upon 

 the prosperity of that forty per cent., more or less, that inhabits the farm. Yet, there 

 seems a tacit combination of others to prevent the farmer from getting such a price for 

 his products as their cost and supply and demand now .justify and when it appears that 

 the farmer is likely to secure such a return as will afford him something more than the 

 meager subsistence which has, of late, been his only reward, the grain gambler, the 

 transporter, merchant and banker rush into print and tell us that if we insist upon such 

 prices as will aflnrd a fair return for the services of the farmer we shall scare away the 

 starving customer from Europe who can find supplies no where else on earth and others 

 will take possession of markets that we alone have the means of supplying. So great 

 is the solicitude lest the farmer shall secure something near what the worker of the wheat 

 corner, of September, 1888, was able to squeeze out of the "shorts", as the value of the 

 bushel of wheat which ihey failed to deliver upon their gambling contracts, that there is 

 held up to our horrified gaze the poor Russian who is likely to loose his hold upon the 

 markets of Western Europe because the Tzar has found it necessary to prohibit the ex- 

 portation of rye lest the 50,000,000 people inhabiting the stricken provinces should perish. 



Another "bugaboo" which the venerable dealer in "puts and calls" holds up to 

 frighten the farmer from ruining the export market by insisting upon the fair price for 

 his products which the scant supply warrants is that the Scandinavian peasant, whom 

 we are told now eats bread made from half tree bark and half flour, will add another 

 twenty-flve per cent, of this most nutritious substance and deprive the American wheat- 

 grower of a market ! Since when have Swedes, Norwegians and Danes taken to a bark 

 diet? What is its nutritive value? What is the tree which furnishes this edible sub- 

 stance? Does it produce annual crops of edible bark and will it thrive in America? 



Does n')t our speculative friend know that while Scandinavia yearly imports 

 some 2,500,000 bushels of wheat and about 12,000,000 bushels of rye that Scandinavian ex- 

 ports of other cereals exceed such quantities by some 6,000,000 bushels? 



Does it not approach the ridiculous to even suggest that the Tzar hazards the mar- 

 ket for Russian grain in trying to save the lives of his starving subjects by retaining a 

 crop of rye that, added to all the wheat that has been harvested, is officially found to be 

 less than the ordinary requirements of the Russian people by more than a hundred 

 million bushels? 



The essayist informs us that he "has studied this subject — presumably that of the 

 world's food supply, as well as short-selling— closely and for a long time." He has cer- 

 tainly studied it to little purpose if he has not learned that with average crops upon so 

 much of its surface as the world has thus far been able to devote to the production of rye 

 and wheat that the annual product is now less than the world's annual requirements by 

 hundreds of millions of bushels and that the annual deficit is increasing at the rate of 

 more than 30,000,000 bushels per year, and that the reason the pinch of scarcity has not 

 sooner been felt was to be found in the existence of great reserves heaped up in the years, 

 ])rior to 1886, when the world's wheat area (and production) was in excess of current 

 lequirements. 



Is it possible that the essayist is ignorant of the fact that while the bread-eaters of the 

 world have, since 1885, increased fully 38,000,000 and the requirements of wheat and rye 

 augmented by more than 230,000,000 bushels— equal to the product of more than 19,000,000 

 average acres — the wheat and rye acreage of the world has increased barely 2,000,000 acres 

 and but for the drafts which the world was able to make upon reserve stores the bread- 

 eaters of many lands would long since have known the pinching scarcity which implies 

 high prices? 



