cheap, to any extent that others may be willing to sell, or to contract to sell, provided the buyer be able to pay for it. Nor, as has been well suggested, could any court convict and punish so severely and promptly as the inexorable laws of trade punish the speculator who trespasses too far on the peace of the community.*

The general business transactions of the world to-day, not only in wheat and corn and oats, but in coffee and sugar, in cotton, in petroleum and tobacco, in iron and steel, woollen and cotton goods, in building of all varieties, and even the dealings of the humblest retail grocer, are found, upon analysis, to be conducted on the basis of future contracts, either expressed or understood. For example, supplies of sugar and coffee are contracted from the importer or jobber by interior houses on the basis of a future delivery; and the importer in selling sells a future, and often goes "short" in so doing, relying on his ability to buy the product in time to ship it. And when many retail grocers throughout the country refused to buy stocks of coffee early in 1886, believing that the advance in price was too rapid and could not be sustained, they practically went short of the coffee market, to their cost; for they all, sooner or later, had to buy at much higher prices.

The great grain markets of the country have systematized the universal practice, and surrounded themselves with safeguards to permit the more efficient and satisfac

*The New York Evening Post in June last said on this subject: "Yesterday, a clique of wheat cornerers at Chicago were fined more than a million dollars for this offence, and the fine was instantly paid. No public expense was incurred in prosecuting the offenders. The State's Attorney was not called upon to render any service. There was no grand jury to find an indictment, and no petit jury to try it, no struggle between the prosecution and the defence over the selection of jurors, no attempt at embracery, no exceptions to the rulings of the court, no appeal to the higher courts, and no petition for executive clemency. It need hardly be said that no court or jury would ever impose a fine of a million dollars in such a case, and that no sheriff would ever be able to collect it if it were imposed. . . . The million dollar fine was not only col

tory marketing and distribution of the world's crops of wheat. It has been seen that the greater share of transactions in futures, which have been aptly termed an adaptation of probable supplies to anticipated requirements, consist of protecting purchases and sales, to insure against loss on wheat in transit, owing to fluctuations in prices during the time occupied by shipment.*

The system of dealing in wheat by means of future contracts may therefore be declared to result in positive and direct economic advantages. It furnishes a ready market to the producer, who can no longer carry necessary surplus stocks. It affords a means of transporting wheat from far distant producing countries at a fixed price delivered, at a minimum of loss through fluctuations of prices while in transit. It enables the trade to collect enormous stocks of wheat and carry them over from seasons of plenty to seasons of scarcity, without loss to producers, millers, or consumers (when considered over considerable periods of time), as may be shown by the records of the decline in prices of wheat and of flour,

lected in a summary manner from the wheat cornerers, but it was collected from each of them in the right proportions, and from the absentees as well as those present. If there were any participants residing in London or Liverpool, they, too, paid their proper share. . . . Judgment, execution, and punishment all came instantaneously. There was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder; and then the sun came out, and everything was serene again. The world is going on as before, and is just as rich as before. There has been a transfer of capital here and there. It has generally been from the pockets of the speculating class to those of the producing class."

* Well-informed and experienced members of the grain trade have the impression that this class of dealings in futures constitutes by far the greater share, in the absence of special temporary disturbing influences. If 100,000,000 bushels of actual wheat were moved in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, between January 1 and July 1, last,- a low estimate,- and 150,000,000 from exporting countries, we may regard 250,000,000 bushels as an approximate total of the quantity against which double that amount of protecting sales were probably made at New York and Chicago during the period specified. This estimate allows for no intermediate sales and purchases, which at the lowest estimate are likely to treble the grand total, thus accounting for at least threefifths of the probable aggregate of trades in futures at New York, Chicago, and St. Louis in the first half of the current year.

together with those of the growth of heavy interior and seaboard stocks awaiting the first telegraphic demand. The tendency is also to equalize prices the world over, as a casual inspection of grain exchange circulars will attest, and to minimize fluctuations by keeping the markets, and through them the world at large, abreast of developments as to crops, the yield, quality, stocks on hand or in transit, and the course of prices at all important centres.

That in the long run these results inure to the advantage of the consumer, and that like any other improvement in production or distribution the elaborate organization of trade cheapens the product for him, admits of no question. This gain has to be accepted, no doubt, like most others, subject to the risk (probably a diminishing risk) of abuse. But an impartial examination and sober judgment of the facts, I believe, can lead to no other conclusion than that, on the whole, the community, after all, purchases at a cheap rate the advantages resulting to it from the dealings in futures.

ALBERT C. STEVENS.

NOTES AND MEMORANDA.

OUR readers will be glad to hear that there is a project well advanced for publishing in England an economic journal, to be issued quarterly. The new periodical will probably be edited from Cambridge, under the charge of Professor Marshall, and the hearty co-operation of the leading economists of England is promised. Its establishment is not yet assured; but the plan has been mature in the minds of the projectors for some time, and is likely to be carried out in the course of the coming winter. There is a place for such a journal in England, where there is at present no convenient medium for the interchange of thought and the publication of monographs, while there is growing activity and interest in economic subjects. The Journal of the Statistical Society alone is in the field, and occupies but a small part of it.

THE First Report of the British Gold and Silver Commission, just issued, is characterized by the absence of valuable material either in the testimony or appendices. It is evident that no trustworthy collection of prices in India can be looked for from this source. The evidence is, as in the case of Mr. Palgrave, mainly a commentary on material already in the hands of the public,- chiefly on that given in the Third Report of the Commission on the Depression of Trade. Mr. Giffen's testimony is significant for an admission that there are no practical means of telling whether gold has risen or fallen in value. (Q. 858, 868.)

The poverty of results may be due either to a dying interest among the English in the practicability of bimetallism since the sale of silver by Germany to Egypt or to a conviction that the Commission was appointed to satisfy a passing clamor, and was intended more for political than for scientific purposes. It is understood that a succeeding volume will contain answers to inquiries sent to specialists throughout the world.

THE Clarendon Press will shortly publish a collection of letters from Ricardo to Malthus, which will form an interesting and important contribution to the history of economic thought. The letters will be edited by their discoverer, Mr. James Bonar, the able writer of the recent volume on Malthus and his work. There are eighty-eight of them, covering the years from 1810 to 1823. They are private and informal discussions of the subject in which the correspondents were interested, sometimes based on previous oral discussions, sometimes written in answer to letters from Malthus to Ricardo, of which, unfortunately, none have as yet been found.

A great variety of topics is touched in this correspondence, the currency, the foreign exchanges, and the corn laws being more prominent in the earlier letters, while in those of later date the problems of distribution and of value come to the foreground. Much light may be expected from them on the development of Ricardo's thought and on the interpretation which Ricardo himself would have wished to put on certain much disputed points in his theories. Although there is comparatively little about private affairs in the letters, they yet serve to throw light, also, on Ricardo's personality, in regard to which there has been not a little misconception among those writers on the history of economics who are disposed to cut loose entirely from his doctrines.

PROFESSOR H. S. FOXWELL, the editor of the late Professor Jevons's Investigations in Currency and Finance, is now editing, and will publish in the course of the winter, part of an unfinished treatise on political economy, on which Jevons was engaged at the time of his death. Hardly more than a fragment of the contemplated work was left in such a state as to admit of publication. But this fragment, which was to have formed the first book of the treatise, contains that part of it which would probably have been most interesting and significant to economists. Jevons began his exposition with a discussion of consumption, and with a description and analysis of the structure of the social body. It is not entirely without precedent to approach the subject from this point of view; yet it is unusual, and points to a mode of presenting