The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-21
GRAIN EXCHANGE
 IN ARGENTINA Checks Rush of Export of
 Product ENDS DEM0RAL TON The Producers Gain s1,5oo, ,ooo-Two Months Witness Advance In Prices Reaching Approximately This
 Amount-Emery's Theory.
REORGANIZATION

Amount-Emery's Theory.
 New York, June 0.-tSpecia1.) .)-Ex- ports of wheat from Argentina have dropped from the stampede gait of six and seven million bushels a week to 2.5o0 ,000 bush els q week during the two months since the grain exchange was opened at Buenos Ayres. The effect 'pon the prices of Argentine wh eat has
 cen an advance which, for the 60
 lays, is authoritatively put at S1,500,- 900 as the total benefit to the wheat growers of the La Plata.
 Grain exporters throughout the worli will never forget the wild scramble for shipping which followed the last Argentine harvest. That country vert far beyond all previous records with d crop of about 00.0O0o00 bushels Of wheat for 1907-0S. For Q few weeks following harvest, shipments were rushed to Europe at a disastrous rate each week because there was then no means for selling the grain for de- livery later as it might be needed. Prices at home were slaughtered in the scra ble to part with the great sur plus.
 Then a body of grain merchants at the mouth of the great La Plata river had a business inspiration. They saw the huge wheat crop of their countr9 sacrificed at low prices, and knew the cause and remedy. They organized n exchange modelled very much after the Chicago board of trade, and at once brains and capital were no longer help less in the competition with the Euro. pean buyers who previously had the Argentine wheat growers at their mercy and had bought the crop at bar gain counter prices.
 For every bushel of grain, every bar Tel of pork or other produce traded in for future delivery on the Chicago ex- change taken as a model for Buenos Ayres or any similar exchange in this country, there is a contract, as specific and binding on both buyer and seller as that which exists between the miller and exporter on the one hand and the grain raiser and the grain warehouse man on the other for the delivery of the prop erty-even specifications as to grade and condition, storage charges insurance, etc. No contract between the United States government and the big packing interests in Chicago for army supplies ever was more explicit or binding in all it's details than that which is made be- tween buyers and sellers on future con- tracts every hour of every exchange day during the year. This system makes 1t i possible to deliver the crop of this great producing nation the demand at home and abroad requires 1t, and to give conn paratvely stable value to the surplus on hand after harvest.
 The current experience in Argentina has demonstrated from an opposite side the same proposition that was worked l out in Germany several years ago when an act was passed forbidding all sales for future delivery. Argentina created tlo system and already has gained immense ly; Germany destroyed and lost. The German act did not stop speculation, but, according to all authorities, it result ed in greater fluctuations in prices than had occurred before.
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 The economic reason for the benefi- cial results of the operations of the Buenos Ayres exchange. and of other sim liar exchanges the world over where, for lack of a better word, most of the trans actions come under the head of 'specula- tion," was given recently by Prof H. C.. Emery of Yale university in his mono graph Speculation from an Economic Standpoint" He is regarded as an au- thority in Europe as well as in the United States. He said
 Speculation has always existed wherever buying and selling has exist ed As long as private ownership of property Is allowed and the value of property varies, speculation will con- tinue. Speculation Is not a product of stock and produce exchanges The exchanges are the product of modern speculation, and speculation in stocks Is the inevitable result of the enormous multiplication of securities due to the extension of the corporate methods of business without which the material prog ress of the last half century would have been impossible.
 Speculation is the assumption of in- evitable business risks of fiuctuating value; gambling is the assumption of purely artificial risks. That speculation cannot arise artificially Is proved by the fact that it does not occur in commodi- ties where there Is no natural fuctuation in values. Speculation arises in response to natural causes and supplies actual needs. That speculation in commodities mas been a great advantage to the farmer no person who knows anything about the facts can possibly doubt Likewise if there were no organized market for securities In which men were constantly buying and selling to take advantage of the fluctuations, many men would have to make their investments in ignorance of the nature of the enterprise in which they were investing''
 Notwithstanding that in the United States prosperous times depend largely upon the crops and the moving of the crops" which has built up the present system, the exchanges many times have been attacked. No doubt 1t is the objec- tioalble nucketshop and irresponsible bro kerage firm features which many of the critics of the exchange have in mind, It is the idea usually that such blind at-
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