Gambling in Farm Produce. 
305 
these “ receivers,” as they are called, has bought a quantity of 
grain he hedges by selling a future against it, and he has no 
further interest in the price of the actual grain, while he has 
an abiding and intensely absorbing interest in depressing the 
price in order that he may buy in his outstanding contracts at 
a profit. The price the receiver pays the farmer, Mr. Davis 
goes on to say, is regulated by the price of options, and it 
matters not to the receiver how low that price may be so long 
as he hedges at once and can drive the price to a still lower 
level when taking in his contracts, and this work he is always 
engaged in. 
The clearness and comprehensiveness of Mr. Davis’s argu- 
ments render it unnecessary to quote many other American 
opponents of the option system whose evidence I have before 
me. 
The opinions of a few merchants on the London Corn 
Exchange have been quoted in defence of the option system ; 
but many more whom I consulted on the subject declared 
strongly against it. Several said that the best firms on Mark 
Lane would have nothing to do with the option dealers, and 
that any firm dabbling in options was regarded with suspicion. 
It was also said that nearly all the London firms who had dealt 
in options had burnt their fingers. The system, it was re- 
marked, did not work well with legitimate trading, and it was 
only those who made a study of it, and devoted themselves 
entirely to it, who could hold their own in it. The prevalent 
opinion among the merchants consulted was also to the effect 
that the option system tended to lower prices, because the men 
selling enormous quantities of fictitious grain were all concerned 
in the depreciation of prices after they had sold, and the buyers, 
importers, and millers had no power against these speculators, 
while many of them become speculators themselves, and inter- 
ested in a fall at least as much as in a rise, by selling futures 
against their purchases. 
The only writer in this country who has dealt with this 
option system in a detailed and comprehensive manner is Mr. 
C. W. Smith, late of Liverpool. In the first book which he 
published on the subject he stated that when the system 
was extended to Liverpool he was a member of a firm of 
brokers in that city, and that for some time he strongly opposed 
the new method of trading. He found, however, that he must 
adopt it unless he intended to be crowded out of his business, 
and when he retired from the firm with which he was connected 
he had been engaged in option trading about fifteen years. 
He commenced, he says, as a “ bull,” but soon found that the 
