The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1897-09-07
Option Gambling in Germany.

The belief is widespread in this country
that laws prohibiting speculation in flu
lures would somehow enhance the prices
received by agr:cuiturists and stock-rais-
ers for their products. The experience OF
German farmers under the law suppress
ing the produce exchanges, which was
passed last winter as the result OF the
clamor of the agrarians, may be of value
therefore, as a corrective of granger the
cries concerning the harnfulness and
W:ckedness of speculation in food products.
For time the members of the suppressed
German Bourses undertook TO continue
their business in the manner TO which they
had become Infatuated by organizing So
cal clubs, where sales for future delivery
went on as usual, with the difference that
the transactions were conducted IN PR
yacy and no quotations were published;
but finally even these so-called clubs were
broken up by the police. According TO the
agrarian theory the farmers millennium
ought to have Immediately arrived, but
instead of this the producers found that
they had been left more completely than
ever at the mercy of the m.ddlemen and
brokers.
Every wheat deal or cattle sale is now
a confidential transaction between seller
and buyer. The public has no reliable in
formation concerning the rise and fall of
prices in the market. The middlemen can
not be compelled to report their transac-
tons, and consequently the farmers no
longer know what prices they may ask
or have a right to expect. The government
has attempted to help the producers out
of the difficulty by publishing daily in
the Official Gazette quotations from Lon
don. Paris, New York and Chicago-an
involuntary confession of the utility of ex-
changes-but the producer, who has no
means of knowing the fiUctuating relations
between supply and demand in his own
market, the constant changes in freight
charges and other matters affecting pr
ces, is left to grope in the dark in his
dealing with the middlemen, notwithstand-
ing all the authorities can do. The large
dealers in grain, with their facilities for
obtaining information of the mutations of
the worlds markets, have ii in their power
to fix prices pretty much TO suit them
selves, and instead of having suffered in
jury by the closure OF the bourses the
German middlemen have been making lar
ger profits under the new system than
under the old. The farmers and not the
spectators have been damnified, and the
former are now as loud in their cries for
the abolition of the "anti-gambl:ng" law
as they were in their clamor for its enact
ment.
indispensable, instrumental:ties of COM
merce, could not have received a more for
chile vindication than il has received from
the results of the German experiment in
agrarian legislation. Prices are made, as
Adam Smith said, in the 'higgling of the
market" and the roducer is certainly bet
ter served by having the higgling done
Denly and Its results recorded and pub
lshed than by leaving the oeration to be
conducted in secret. Exchange quotations
as a general rule are accurate reflections
of the conditions which influence and make
prices. Spectators, as we'll as genuine
traders, must render obedience TO the in
exorable law of supply and demand. If
the market be "cornered" at long intervals
by speculative cliques. in the long run pri-
ces Will find their natural level; and the
victims of corners are seldom, if ever,
the producers. but other operators. large
or small, who happen to be caught short"
on a rising or long on falling market.
The advantages accru!ng to roducers from
the oerations of exchanges are incalcula-
bly, greater than their mostly imaginary
i'll effects.