Gambling in Farm Produce. 
287 
clearing-house for the settlement of the contracts, based on the 
system in question, was established in Liverpool, and by that 
time wheat and maize were embraced by it. There was not 
much done as regards grain under the system, however, even in 
Liverpool , before 1889. In 1888 the London Produce Clearing 
House was registered for the settlement of contracts in wheat, 
coffee, beet sugar, tea, silk, and silver. 
As far as grain is concerned, however, the option system has 
made hardly any headway in London. No transactions in it 
take place on Mark Lane, though there are some on the Baltic, 
and the leading firms, as a rule, will have nothing to do with 
it. Liverpool is the only market in England in which the 
system has been extensively introduced into the grain trade. 
In the first instance, the system appears to have been the 
legitimate one of selling commodities for future delivery, the 
seller actually delivering at the date specified; but it was 
not long before what American farmers denounce as the abuse 
of “ wind selling ” or “ flat selling ” sprang up, extending to 
abominations of open gambling, which even the defenders of 
the system themselves do not excuse. 
In order to render the operation of the system clear to those 
who have not studied it, it is necessary to define the principal 
terms which belong to it. Put in the fewest words, an “ option ” 
is an agreement whereby one party secures the option of selling 
to or buying from another party a given quantity of a certain 
commodity at a future date or within a future period at a fixed 
price. A “ future ” is an agreement whereby one party agrees to 
sell and deliver to, or buy and receive from, another party a 
given quantity of a certain commodity at a future date or within 
a future period, at a fixed price. As a matter of fact, at the 
present time there is no difference between an option and a 
future, whether there ever was any difference or not. Until an 
effort was made to diminish the abuses of the option system, 
it was optional on the part of one of the parties to a transaction 
whether he would deliver or receive the commodity nominally 
dealt in, or pay or receive the difference between the price named 
in the contract and the current price at the date of its maturity ; 
but it is said that no exchange or board of trade in the United 
States now recognises a contract in which ultimate delivery is 
optional. In the regular gambling-houses, outside the recognised 
exchanges, an option has the signification above referred to, no 
produce ever being delivered. But now, in the regular exchanges, 
the only option openly recognised is as to the precise date, 
within a month, at which delivery shall take place. According 
to agreement, say in a June option, the buyer or seller has the 
