Gambling in Farm Produce. 
303 
1,077,000,000 bushels, or 9‘8 per cent., reached the eight interior 
Board of Trade markets. All the rest, or 90’2 per cent., was 
distributed without the aid of the option system. Hence he 
contends that it is absurd to say that wheat and maize cannot 
be disposed of under the ordinary system of trading. 
Mr. Davis declares that no more wheat is handled in Chicago 
at the present time than was handled in the year 1880, when 
the option system was only in its beginning ; and that if the 
grain could be dealt with in the old-fashioned way in 1880, 
there is no reason why it could not be distributed in like manner 
at the present time. Any man, he says, who can raise #250 to 
be put up as a margin can go upon the Board of Trade and 
offer for sale wheat that he never saw. Great numbers of people 
are trading in this way, and Mr. Davis contends that the 
enormous fictitious sales of wheat which take place must tend 
to lower prices. New York, he adds, sold more wheat in one 
day than could be delivered in twelve months. The commis- 
sions alone on fictitious sales, he complains, reach five million 
dollars per annum, and these are five million reasons why the 
men who deal in options should wish the system to be continued, 
and also five million reasons why the farmers should desire to 
get rid of the system. A young man, he says, with good lungs 
and 2| cents (for a margin), can produce a bushel of wheat more 
quickly than he can ; and, he adds : — 
When Dunham & Co. failed in Chicago their cash capital was #26,000 
and they carried 10,000,000 dollars’ worth of short grain, which was 
brought into competition with my actual grain on a margin of 2j cents a 
bushel. 
He declares that in 999 out of every 1,000 transactions 
under the option system the seller neither owns nor expects to 
own the grain he contracts to deliver, and the buyer does not 
expect to receive the grain he has contracted to receive and pay 
for, the tacit understanding being that at the maturity of the 
contract the difference between the contract price and the current 
price of maturity should be settled between them. With respect 
to the manner in which the option system depresses prices, Mr. 
Davis declares that nine-tenths of the time more option dealers 
are interested in depressing prices than in advancing prices, so 
that the weight and influence of this speculative body is almost 
constantly exerted in attempting to run prices down. His 
arguments on this point of the question are so pithy that I make 
no apology for quoting some portions of them as they appeared 
in the Albany Cultivator : — 
First comes the constitutional bear, who, from long habit of thought, 
or a pessimistic mental tendency, has come to believe prices are always too 
