THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



the Peavey Grain Company and the Armour 

 Grain Company, each operating grain-mixing 

 houses. The Peavey Company had released 

 80 cars in the name of the Armour Company, 

 and the Armour Company had released 35 

 cars in the name of the Peavey Company. 

 These cars, on examination, were found to 

 contain only a few kernels of new oats, all the 

 rest being old. The profits were goodly to 

 the operators, but the loss to the farmers was 

 irreparable. 1 



The amount of gambling in grain in this 

 country is enormous and unsuspected by the 

 moralists, who are generally shocked at a faro 

 layout and indifferent to this immeasurably 

 greater evil. It was estimated in 191G that 

 the total of trading in futures on the Minne- 

 apolis Chamber of Commerce was 10,000,000,- 

 000 bushels a year, though the total receipts 

 of actual wheat were only 300,000,000 bushels. 

 In 1915 Samuel Hallett Greely, for a quarter 

 of a century a trader on the Chicago Board of 

 Trade, sold his membership that he might 

 testify freely, and appeared before a committee 

 of the national House of Representatives then 

 investigating grain exchanges. He said that 

 in his judgment, at the lowest estimate the 

 trading in futures on the Chicago Board 



1 Before the Interstate Commerce Commission. In rr Relations of 

 Common Carriers to the Grain Trade; testimony of II. D. Wetmore, 

 member of the Chicago Board of Trade, November, 1900. See 

 Senate Document 278 of Uiat year. 



158 



