Gambling in Farm Produce. 
293 
Bill there is no exception in favour of the manufacturer or con- 
sumer, everyone being practically prohibited from selling for 
future delivery unless he is the owner of the goods, or has 
acquired by purchase the right of their future possession under 
a contract previously made. 
Some idea of the extent to which the future system prevails 
in the United States may be obtained from a statement of the 
recorded sales of wheat at the New York Produce Exchange 
during the first half of 1887, given by Mr. Steevens, the Editor 
of Bradstreef s , in an article which he published some time ago 
in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The spot sales amounted 
to 48,836,360 bushels, and the sales of futures to 867,594,740 
bushels. Although he is a defender of the future system, 
he says : — • 
The future sales as reported are nearly double the total reported harvest 
of wheat in the United States in 1886» During the same half-year the cash 
sales at St. Louis were 5,676,000 bushels, and the sales of futures 
134.720.000. 
Mr. Steevens goes on to say : — 
It is undoubtedly well within the limits of probability to assert that 
future sales of wheat at St. Louis, Chicago, and Toledo, with trading at 
leading Atlantic ports, aggregated during the first half of 1887 considerably 
in excess of two thousand million bushels of wheat ; in other words, that 
they more than equalled the total production of wheat in the world in 1886. 
It is to be observed that this total is for half a year only, and 
if for the whole year it was double, it amounted to about nine 
times the total production of wheat in the United States in the 
preceding harvest. But even this statement does not fully 
show the extent to which transactions are multiplied under the 
option system . Mr. Davis, of Kansas, says that by far the greater 
portion of the wheat grown in the United States is distributed 
from the local markets, and does not reach the Board of Trade 
markets at all ; also, that a very large proportion of the wheat 
does not reach the lowest grade dealt with under the option 
system. He quotes from a report of the Chicago Board of 
Trade, showing that during five years ending with 1888 
11.040.000. 000 bushels of wheat and maize were grown, of 
which only 1,077,000,000 bushels, or 9-8 per cent., reached the 
eight interior Board of Trade markets, and much of this was 
doubtless counted twice, as grain is shipped from one market to 
another. He goes on to say that the grain reaching the sea- 
board markets cannot be counted, as it has been included once, 
if not twice, at interior points ; and hence it follows that less 
than ten per cent, of the wheat and maize produced is sold in the 
