310 
Gambling in Farm Produce. 
system. Moreover, as already stated, they could sell futures to 
the full amount of the grain in their possession for actual de- 
livery any number of months ahead ; and if the gambling element 
of the option system were destroyed, there is no doubt that 
they would sell futures in this way. Legitimate specula- 
tion in the purchase of wheat beforehand without any hedging 
has been knocked on the head by the gambling system, and 
would be restored by the abolition of that system. The system 
has rendered the markets in which it prevails the playground of 
gambling tricksters, and has gone far to render legitimate 
trading altogether unsafe. It has broken down all confidence 
in the old system of judging as to the probable course of trade, 
based upon present and prospective supplies and demands. 
These influences, I am convinced, have had a far more potent 
effect in depressing prices than any risk of holding wheat 
through the winter could possibly have if business were conducted 
in the old-fashioned way. Even if it be true that men who 
hold large stocks of wheat until they can be sent into consump- 
tion would want to make larger carrying charges than they 
make at present under the hedging system, there appears to me 
every reason to believe that such extra margins of profit would 
be trifling in comparison with the advantages to be obtained 
through the abolition of a system which tends to lower prices all 
round, probably to an enormous extent. 
The contention that there is no such thing as mere “ wind- 
selling,” or gambling in prices, in any regular market, because 
delivery is always “ contemplated,” is clearly a mere subterfuge, as 
it is admitted that there is no delivery in forty-nine future con- 
tracts out of fifty, or perhaps in ninety-nine out of a hundred. 
It will not do to say that in the cases in which delivery does not 
take place there is a nominal transfer of produce which is ulti- 
mately delivered to someone, because this is true only in cases 
in which a specified lot of produce is sold and resold many 
times, while in the vast majority of instances no particular lot 
is ever in view, but only a certain quantity of a given grade. 
A may sell 10,000 bushels of No. 2 American red wheat, 
nominally for July delivery, to B, who in his turn sells 5,000 
bushels of the same grade to C for August delivery and 5,000 
bushels to D for September, while C and D in their turn may 
sell various quantities of the same grade for different months. 
In all probability the wheat in sight when A’s July delivery 
would be due would all have been disposed of before C’s Sep- 
tember delivery took place ; so that it would be nonsense to say 
that the wheat A sells is merely transferred, instead of being 
delivered to B. All the men may settle in differences of price, 
