The Value of Money Part 9

A detailed a.n.a.lysis of Kinley's figures, on which the estimate of total trade is based, leads clearly to the same conclusion. Kinley's figures for the banks that reported on March 16, 1909, are as follows:

Retail deposits 60 millions Wholesale deposits 124 millions "All other" deposits 502 millions

The "all other deposits" are vastly greater than retail and wholesale deposits combined! Notice, too, with reference to the question as to how often goods need to be turned over in getting to the consumer: wholesale trade uses only about twice as much money and checks as does retail trade. Goods are not, if these figures are in any way typical of actual trade, turned over many times in the process of reaching the consumer.

The "necessary," or "physically determined" number of exchanges, in the routine of trade, is small, per item.

Retail deposits of 60 millions make up less than one-eleventh of the total. Retail and wholesale deposits together make up about three-elevenths. What is the other eight-elevenths, represented by the "all other deposits"? It will help if we see where these "all other"

deposits are located. If we find them scattered evenly throughout the country, in rural regions as well as in cities, we might be at a loss.

If, however, we find them bunched in the big speculative centres, we may conclude that speculation accounts for a large part of them. We do in fact find this.

The following figures show the different cla.s.ses of deposits (1) in the South Atlantic States; (2) in reserve cities; (3) in New York City alone:

_South Atlantic States:_ _Per Cent._

Retail deposits $ 3,300,000 19.0 Wholesale deposits 4,900,000 29.0 "All other" deposits 8,900,000 52.0

_Reserve Cities (including New York City):_

Retail deposits $ 24,000,000 5.6 Wholesale deposits 78,000,000 18.2 "All other" deposits 326,000,000 76.1

_New York City:_

Retail deposits 9,000,000 3.7 Wholesale deposits 34,000,000 14.0 "All other" deposits 198,000,000 82.2

It is difficult, with Kinley's figures, to get figures which exclude returns from cities of substantial size, except for a State like Nevada, where the mining and divorce industries complicate the figures. As near an approach as can be made, perhaps, is to take the State of Louisiana, excluding New Orleans from the totals. Even here, however, we include five cities of over ten thousand, among them Shrevesport, with 28,000 people. The following figures are for the State and national banks in Louisiana, exclusive of New Orleans:

Retail deposits $179,915 24.1 Wholesale deposits 246,647 33.1 "All other" deposits 318,915 42.8

We cannot tell, in these figures for Louisiana, how many banks are represented, or what the average figures per bank are. For the whole State of Arkansas, however, including five cities of over 10,000, with two over 20,000, and one of 45,000, we can get an average for ninety reporting banks. Even here we do not know where these banks are located within the State; though it is probable that they are in the larger places, and so exceed the average deposits for the banks in the State as a whole, to say nothing of the average for the smaller places. The ninety banks are almost wholly State and national banks.

_Arkansas:_ _Per Cent._

Retail deposits $232,017 25+ Wholesale deposits 231,614 25+ "All other" deposits 456,544 49+

The average for all deposits, per bank, in Arkansas is $10,224; the average for all the 11,492 banks reporting for the whole country is, approximately, $60,000; the average for the 659 banks reporting from New York State is $502,136; the average for the banks in New York City alone is doubtless much higher, but cannot be stated, as Kinley's figures do not tell how many banks reported by cities.[253]

The "all other deposits" in Arkansas are 27.8% cash, and 72.2% checks; the "all other" deposits in the country as a whole are only 4.1% cash, with 95.9% checks; the "all other deposits" of New York City are only 1% cash, with 98.9% checks.

Several facts are very clear from these comparisons: (1) the proportion of "all other deposits" increases very rapidly as we get closer to the great centres of speculation, and is lowest in rural regions; (2) the great bulk of all the deposits is in the cities. The average for Arkansas banks, for example, is only one-sixth the average of the whole country, and is only one-fiftieth the average for the banks of New York State. It is a much smaller fraction of the average for New York City, but we cannot give an exact figure. The totals reported from the rural regions are trifling, as compared with the totals reported from the big cities. This, as will be made clear in the chapter on "Statistical Demonstrations of the Quant.i.ty Theory," is not because the country reports were less complete that the city reports. New York was probably less complete than the country as a whole. It is simply because the activity of country accounts is small, the amount of trading in the country districts small, and (as shown) the _average_ for country banks is small. (3) The character of the "all other" deposits in Arkansas differs substantially from that of the "all other" deposits in New York City, as indicated by the fact that the proportion of cash is high in Arkansas--substantially higher, in fact, for the "all other" deposits in Arkansas than for all deposits, or even for retail deposits, in the country as a whole. The percentage of checks in total retail deposits in the United States, in Kinley's figures, was 73.2; the percentage of checks in the "all other" deposits in Arkansas was 72.2. We may count these Arkansas "all other" deposits as, in considerable degree, deposits made by farmers. What were the "all other deposits" made in New York City?

Dean Kinley's list of the miscellaneous elements that enter into the "all other deposits," given on p. 151, contains only two that might be expected to bulk large in New York without appearing in Arkansas. These are: _brokers_, _and stock and bond financial corporations_. Of course, theatres, hotels, publis.h.i.+ng houses, railroads, public funds, "those who have no specific business," and rich churches, will all be absolutely much larger in New York City than in Arkansas. But these things may be found in many places, scattered throughout the cities of the country, without making anything like such "all other" deposits as New York shows. It is not New York's foreign commerce that does it, because that is represented in New York's "wholesale deposits," which make up only 14% of New York City's total deposits for the day. It cannot be the supposed "clearing house" function of New York City,[254]

whereby banks in different parts of the country pay their balances due one another in New York exchange, because such transactions would appear in New York chiefly in the figures for deposits made by one bank in another, and these figures are excluded from Kinley's totals. It cannot be the deposits of the "idle rich" for current expenses that swell New York's "all other deposits" so greatly--these could not equal the total retail deposits of the city, which are only 3.7% of the total in New York. Moreover, similar deposits are made in many other cities, without, in proportion to population, making any such totals. Figures, moreover, for the aggregate yearly income of the United States, and for the distribution of that income between rich and poor, make it clear that any such items must be bagatelles in comparison with these enormous figures. The only explanation that will really explain is the speculative and investment and financial transactions that centre in New York, and, in less degree, in the other great financial cities of the country.

This is Dean Kinley's opinion. In the "all other" deposits he makes a 50% allowance for speculative transactions. "A large proportion of deposits in this 'all others' cla.s.s undoubtedly represents speculative transactions, all of which, or practically all of which, are settled with credit paper."[255] It is also the opinion of General Francis A.

Walker, expressed concerning similar figures from earlier inquiries.[256]

Various kinds of evidence converge toward this conclusion. Thus, the evidence of clearings, total items presented by banks to the clearing houses of the country. New York clearings are usually nearly twice as great as total clearings for the rest of the country. New York clearings fluctuate in general harmony with transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. This has been commented on many times. The extent to which it holds has recently been carefully measured by Mr. N. J. Silberling, whose results appear in the _Annalist_ for August 14, 1916, under the t.i.tle, "The Mystery of Clearings." Mr. Silberling applies the "coefficient of correlation" to the problem, getting in one significant figure a measure of the extent to which two variables, as share sales on the New York Stock Exchange and New York clearings, vary together. This coefficient has been used enough by economists not to require detailed explanation here. It is a figure always between +1 and -1. +1 indicates that the two variables in question are perfectly correlated, whereas 0 indicates no correlation whatever. -1 indicates an inverse correlation, such that two variables vary exactly and inversely with reference to one another.[257]

Mr. Silberling's studies show the following correlations: New York share sales (numbers of shares, not values) to New York clearings, using weekly figures, for the years 1909-10, r = .628. This is a high correlation. Limiting the observations to the middle weeks of the month for the same period, he gets r = .731(46). The reason for taking only middle weeks in the month is that thereby the disturbing factor of monthly settlements is avoided. The monthly settlements may be for stock transactions, or may be for other things, but as they are not dependent on the stock transactions _of the week_ in which they occur, their effect is to lessen the evident degree of connection between stock sales and clearings. Thus the middle weeks show a closer correlation between the two variables than do all the weeks taken as they come. If figures for the month were taken, this complication would be smoothed out, and a fairer result might be expected to appear. The middle weeks, eliminating monthly settlements, probably eliminate more other things than they do share sales (which are in large degree paid for in 24 hours[258]), and so exaggerate somewhat the relation between shares and clearings. Monthly figures avoid both complications, though they lose something of the concrete causation. An intermediate figure might be expected for the monthly correlation, and this we find: r = .718(23).

A striking single fact in connection with these figures, giving them point as less extreme variations could not do, is found in the behavior of clearings when the Stock Exchange was closed, during the crisis of 1914. At that time, New York clearings, which had been about twice as great as country clearings, fell suddenly _below_ country clearings.

When the Stock Exchange was opened, the old proportions suddenly reappeared.

That speculation spreads far beyond New York, New York being the centre for dealings in securities, etc., which involve the whole country, is, of course, well known. The extent of this Mr. Silberling seeks to measure by correlating clearings outside New York with New York share sales. His weekly correlation for these two variables for 1909-10 gives r = .368(103), and the correlation for the mid-weeks gives a higher figure, r = .424(46). The monthly correlation shows r = .257(23), a lower figure, "which is perhaps due in part to the fact that the bulk of the outside monthly clearings show relatively moderate fluctuations, because of their diverse composition, and are less sensitive than the periods of shorter length."

Seeking an index of the variations of that trade which is, in Professor Fisher's phrase, governed by "physical capacities and technique"--a law which Professor Fisher,[259] as we have seen, would apply to the great total of 387 billions which he has constructed--Mr. Silberling chooses the gross earnings of the princ.i.p.al railways as the best available test.

Railways deal with all manner of other enterprises. He correlates this with clearings outside New York. "The question might arise at once whether changes in traffic are strictly concomitant with changes in payments involved by it, and therefore with the clearings resulting. The preliminary hypothesis that a 'lag' ensued between traffic and the bulk of the payments was first tested by correlating the railway figures with clearings of one month[260] and two months later, but no correlation was obtained. The direct month-to-month correlation yielded, however, a result r = .524(23)." This suggests that outside clearings are, in substantial degree, an index of physical trade, but Mr. Silberling calls attention to certain chance agreements between railway traffic and speculation in cotton and produce and grain, speculation in the crops which are in current movement, and regularly recurring concomitances between traffic and speculation in March, when the railway traffic revives after the February lull, and when there is a large ma.s.s of dealing in Spring deliveries in Chicago. In view of the facts later to be developed, with reference to the small actual value of the necessary physical exchanges (partially covered already) as compared with clearings, this query is well put. We may easily have here a "spurious"

correlation. Taking it at its face value, however, and taking the correlation as indicating the influence of physical trade on bank transactions, we get the following results, when _total clearings for the country_ are compared with (a) New York share sales, and (b) with railway gross earnings: (a) r = .607(23); (b) r = .356(23). "Physically determined trade" is at best a minor factor in that total "trade"

represented by bank transactions!

Mr. Silberling has b.u.t.tressed his results with a consideration of various alternative possibilities which might give them a different interpretation. I need not, for present purposes, go further into his figures.[261] Taken in conjunction with the other data presented, and to be presented, together with the theoretical discussion of the nature of trade, and its relations to money and credit, which the present volume contains, they give the present writer abundant confidence in the thesis that the great bulk of trade in the United States is SPECULATION, rather than that sort of trade which is determined "by physical capacities and technique."

The figures given above, of the inventory of wealth at a given moment of time, by the Bureau of the Census, show only trifling magnitudes, as compared with the estimated 387 billions of deposits made in 1909, of items which could enter into ordinary trade, as distinguished from speculation and dynamic readjustments. An effort to calculate ordinary trade on the basis of figures running through the year may throw further light on the problem. Railway, gross receipts for the year ending June 30, 1909, were less than two and a half billions. This is six-tenths of 1% of the total. Receipts of the Western Union Telegraph Company were $30,451,073--less than one-hundredth of 1%. The Post Office in the fiscal year ending in 1909 took in $203,562,383. This is something over one twentieth of 1%. These are gigantic sums. But they are insignificant indeed in this computation. Millions of smaller items simply do not count at all--ten million items of $387 each would give only 1%. The total net income of the United States, as estimated by W. I. King for 1910, including all forms of income, dividends, interest, wages, rents, profits, salaries, etc., is $30,500,000,000[262]--around 7% of the 387 billions.

Let us sum up the major items of ordinary trade. From Kinley's figures, we may get some idea of the proportions of wholesale and retail trade to the total for 1909, a.s.suming that the deposit figures indicate that total. Retail deposits make up less than one-eleventh of the total, and wholesale deposits about two-elevenths. The figures were: retail, 60 millions, wholesale, 124 millions, and "all other," 502 millions. But the "all other" deposits were lower than normal. New York City was, in the first place, probably less complete than the rest of the country, in the figures returned, and, in the second place, New York City, as shown by the clearings of March 17 (the next day, when checks deposited in New York would get into the clearings) was 28% below normal. The rest of the country was within 3% of normal.[263] Not to refine matters too much, we shall, on the a.s.sumption that the variable element in New York deposits is connected with the Stock Exchange (as shown by Mr. Silberling's correlations and other considerations), and on the a.s.sumption that deposits connected with the stock market appear in the "all other"

deposits, add a little over 20% of New York's total of 198 millions, or 40 millions, to the "all other" deposits for the country, leaving the wholesale and retail deposits unchanged. What error there is in this is favorable to the wholesale and retail deposits. Our proportions, then, are: retail, 60, wholesale, 124, "all other," 542, total, 726. If the retail deposits correctly represented retail trade, we could then say that retail trade was a little less than one-twelfth of the whole, and wholesale trade about one-sixth. But there are many speculative transactions engaged in by wholesalers, and a good many by retailers.

The writer knows a small delicatessen dealer on Amsterdam Avenue, in New York, who frequently speculates in eggs and canned goods. A colleague in the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is authority for the statement that speculation in canned goods and some other things is quite common among retailers, particularly "hedging" by the use of "futures," in canned goods. Speculation among wholesalers is very extensive. The same is true of manufacturers. The same authority cited some cotton manufacturers whose profits from cotton speculation are greater than their profits from manufacturing. We shall see reason to suppose that a very substantial part of manufacturers' deposits were included in the wholesale deposits. That the figures for retailers'

deposits exaggerate the retail trade may appear from several considerations: (1) The proportion of checks to cash reported is too high: 73.2%. Dean Kinley allows 5% of the checks deposited to be "accommodation checks,"[264] cashed for customers, rather than taken in in trade. (2) If retail deposits are taken as exactly representative of retail trade, we should get a retail trade for the year of over 32 billions (1/12 of 387 billions), which would exceed the total income of the country as calculated by King for 1910. Dean Kinley reached the conclusion that the retail deposits reported in 1896 also exceeded the probable retail expenditures.[265] Of course, not all of retail trade is in consumption goods. Hardware stores, lumber stores, and some other retail establishments sell, not only to householders for domestic use, but also things which enter into further production, and so do not come out of annual income. If we include in retail trade various items which were not included there in Kinley's figures, such as hotels, theatres, newspaper receipts from subscription and street sales, physicians' fees, etc.--all those items which enter into the domestic budget, including domestic service, we should still not be justified in reaching a total as great as the total income of society, since there would then be no allowance for savings, which we should not count in trade, or for life insurance, which we shall count separately. The items sold at retail which enter into further production cannot make a great total, since large producers buy such things at wholesale. Total retail trade, therefore, and, in addition all the other items in the domestic budget, must be held below the figure for total national income. Suppose, to be very liberal, we allow 29 billions[266] for all these items, under the general head of "retail trade."

For wholesale trade, if we take the figures at face value, the estimate would be 65-3/4 billions (124/726 of 387 billions, or 17% of 387 billions). But we have seen that there is a great deal of speculation among wholesalers. Not all of their deposits, by any means, represent receipts from ordinary business. Moreover, there is much overcounting here, several checks being used for one transaction, especially where wholesalers have branch houses, and checks connected with loans and repayments, and transfers of funds from one bank to another. How much we should subtract for this there is no way to tell. In the case of retail figures, we have the additional check of the figures for total net income, but there is no such check here. We shall, therefore, make no subtraction, but shall content ourselves with pointing out that we are allowing many billions[267] to "ordinary trade" to which it is not ent.i.tled, which will much more than offset errors in the opposite direction which the reader may find in our computations.

Do manufacturers' receipts from first sales belong in the wholesale deposits, or must they be counted as a separate item? Dean Kinley does not say. In his list of items, as reported by banks, that go in the "all other" deposits,[268] he does not mention manufacturers, and the item is far too important not to have been mentioned by so careful a writer had he supposed that it belonged there. If manufacturers' first receipts belong, not in the wholesale deposits, but in the "all other" deposits, then we should expect manufacturing cities to show a high percentage of "all other" deposits as compared with wholesale deposits. The city of Pittsburg should be a good test case. The figures there, for State and national banks and trust companies, are:

_Per Cent._ Retail deposits $1,061,420 9.6 Wholesale deposits 3,368,004 29.7 "All other" deposits 6,672,378 60.6

For Pittsburg, the percentage of "all other" deposits is lower decidedly than the percentage for the country as a whole (about 75%), much lower than for cities where there is active speculation, as Chicago and St.

Louis, to say nothing of New York, and is closer to the percentage of the South Atlantic States, 52%, than to the average for the country. The wholesale deposits of Pittsburg, however, rise to 29.7%, as against an average for the country of 17%. There is nothing in these figures to suggest that manufacturers' first receipts are exclusively in the "all other" deposits. I should think it safe to hold that a substantial part of them were included in wholesale deposits, and so already accounted for in our estimate. The total value of products manufactured in 1909 was $20,672,051,870. I shall allow $5,672,051,870 of this to have been already accounted for in our estimate of wholesale trade, and count 15 billions of it as a separate item. If there is an error here, it is very much more than offset by our failure to subtract anything from the wholesale figures for speculation. I think it probable that much more of the figures for manufactures should be a.s.signed to the wholesale figures than I have a.s.signed.

To these figures, we may add a number of other items, absolutely great, but insignificant, in comparison with the 387 billions not only, but also with the figures for retail and wholesale trade already reached.

These are: total farm value of farm products (not nearly all of which is sold off the farm) $8,760,000,000; total mineral products, $1,886,772,843; total mill value of lumber, $684,479,859; total life insurance premiums (much of which is savings, and in no proper sense trade), $748,027,892; total fire, marine, casualty and miscellaneous insurance, $362,555,850; total wages and salaries, $14,303,000,000; total land rent, $2,673,000,000;[269] and the items for railway gross receipts, post office, telegraph, already mentioned. The total of these items, together with retail and wholesale trade and manufactures, is $141,860,618,000. This is only 36.6% of the total of 387 billions. It leaves over 245 billions unexplained. What can the 245 billions represent? There is really no way in which ordinary trade can make up more than a very few more billions, so far as I can see. There remain no items as big as 1% of the total, and, as we have seen, small items, of hundreds of dollars each, are like "infinitesimals of the second order"--they simply do not count at all when such staggering figures are involved.[270]

There remains, then, a total of 245 billions of check and money payments which are for something other than the ordinary trade of the country.

What do these payments represent? Much of this total represents overcounting and duplications of various kinds, which we shall consider in a later chapter. Much of it also represents speculation and dealings other than speculative in securities. When we seek to find actual figures of transactions in any field, retail, wholesale, or speculative markets, or anything else, it is exceedingly difficult to find anything that approaches the amounts indicated by the banking transactions connected. I do not think that a record of all sales would show retail sales or wholesale sales anything like so great as the figures as we have allowed for them on the basis of the retail and wholesale deposits.

When we look at the recorded figures of transactions on the speculative exchanges (or at estimates which competent observers make when records are not available), the figures, though very large, do not begin to equal the banking figures with which we have to deal. The New York Stock Exchange in 1909 showed sales, recorded on the ticker, of nearly 215 million shares of stock, with an approximate value of over 19 billions[271] of dollars. This was not an extraordinary year. In 1901 nearly 266 million shares were sold, in 1905, over 263 millions, in 1906, over 284 millions. A number of other years have approached the figures for 1909. If stock sales be a good index of general speculation, 1909 is a very satisfactory year from which to have got figures, as showing neither extreme speculation, nor extreme dullness--which latter was the case in 1896 when Kinley's other big investigation was made. The figures for shares sold, however, do not exhaust the business done at the New York Stock Exchange. "Odd lots," _i. e._, sales of less than 100 shares, are not recorded on the ticker. Mr. Byron W. Holt estimates that from 25 to 30% would be added if they were counted. DeCoppet and Doremus, of New York, who handle at least as much of the "odd lot"

business as any other New York house, have given me the following information about the "odd lot" business: (1) the volume of odd lot sales is, roughly, from 20 to 25% of the volume of hundred share sales; (2) the odd lot business fluctuates in conformity to the hundred share market; (3) the odd lot speculator is just as likely to be a "bear" as is the hundred share speculator, and, in general, odd lot business is like the hundred share business. If we take the figure on which these two estimates agree, 25%, we may add 53-3/4 million shares to our 215, getting 268-3/4 million shares for 1909, with a value of about 24 billions. Bond sales recorded would add about 1 billion more. There are, further, some unrecorded sales, indeterminate in amount, but sometimes very substantial, when brokers have a number of "stop loss" orders. They match these before the market opens, and, if the prices are reached in the actual trading, these sales become effective automatically, without getting on the ticker. How extensive this is cannot be stated. It may sometimes add very substantially.[272] Thus, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange we have dealings in excess of 25 billions for 1909.

This is nearly as large as the figure we have a.s.signed, on the basis of the bank figures, to total retail trade of the country, and it may well exceed the retail trade in fact. Recorded sales on other stock exchanges do not, in the aggregate for the country, bulk very large. For 1910, when New York shares reached 164 millions, the total for Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore was something over 21 million shares.[273] The New York Curb has had "million share" days, but the average value of shares is low. But the dealings on the floors on the exchanges and "curbs" are far from all of the dealings in securities!

Only securities which have been admitted by the authorities are dealt in on the exchanges. The volume of unlisted securities is enormous.

Moreover, not all, by any means, of the sales of listed securities take place on the floors of the exchanges. The bond expert of a large banking house in Boston informs me that the "over-the-counter" business in Boston, both for stocks and for bonds, much exceeds the business in the Boston Stock Exchange, and others among Boston brokers have expressed the same opinion. The statement has been repeatedly made in the financial press that of the bonds listed on the New York Stock Exchange, ten are sold over the counter for one sold on the floor. Evidence on this point is not to be had in definite figures, of course, but I have found no one in Wall Street who regards it as extravagant. A single big bank in New York sold $550,000,000 in bonds in 1911--more than half the recorded bond sales on the Stock Exchange.[274] I should not know how to estimate the volume of outside dealings within many billions of "probable error." If ten billions of listed bonds are sold over the counter in New York alone, we may well suppose that the volume of over-the-counter sales of listed and unlisted securities at least is not smaller than the recorded sales on the floors of the exchanges. But this is all guess work. There are no definite data.

For produce, cotton, and grain speculation we have, in general, estimates rather than records. For the Board of Trade, in Chicago, there is one quite striking piece of information. That is that the Federal War Tax of 1 cent per hundred dollars on grain and provision futures on the exchanges produced $2,000,000 in Chicago alone in 1915.[275] For the purposes of the tax, deliveries within thirty days were counted, not as futures, but as "spot" transactions. The tax was collected almost wholly on grain. If the above figure is correct, then it is clear that dealings in these futures of over thirty days aggregated 20 billions of dollars worth. This gives no estimate of spot transactions, which are, however, very great. All this trading involved less than 400,000,000 bushels of grain received at Chicago--a little over a billion bushels were received at all primary markets. The grain received at Chicago was, thus, (at 80 c. per bushel), sold sixty-two times over in these futures, and an unknown number of times in spot transactions. There are further enormous spot transactions in provisions of various kinds at Chicago.

Chicago is the great centre, of course, for this kind of speculation in the United States. It may well be the world's chief market, so far as futures are concerned, though evidence to establish such a thesis is not at hand. London and Liverpool are gigantic centres of commodity speculation. But we have numerous cities in the United States where such speculation is very great. St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and other cities are active speculative centres. New York, while small in its volume of grain and produce speculation as compared with Chicago, is the world's centre for cotton speculation, and the world's centre for futures in coffee, though yielding precedence to Havre, Santos and Hamburg,[276] ordinarily, in the volume of spot coffee transactions, and though handling only a very small amount of spot cotton. The volume of cotton sold in an ordinary year in New York is 50,000,000 bales,[277] though only about 160,000 bales are ordinarily received there, in a year.[278] In the five years preceding 1909, the sales on the New York Coffee Exchange averaged over 16 million bags of 250 pounds each.[279] In 1915, 32 million dollars were deposited as margins in connection with this speculation in coffee, and in ordinary years this runs from 25 to 30 millions, according to the Treasurer of the Exchange. The relation between the margins put up and the total pecuniary volume of trading is not indicated, but in most exchanges the actual depositing of margins is a small fraction of the pecuniary magnitude of the turnovers. Both the Cotton and the Coffee Exchanges are international centres. The Coffee Exchange now handles large transactions in sugar, also.

Contacts between the organized exchanges and ordinary business are very numerous. Producers in every line who can do so protect themselves by "hedging" in the exchanges which deal in their raw materials. This is a commonplace, so far as millers are concerned. The writer has found millers in a town off the main lines of the railroads in Missouri who regularly sell short a bushel of wheat on the St. Louis Merchants'

Exchange for every bushel they buy to grind. The business man who does not sometime take a "flier" in the market for other than hedging purposes is rare! But, apart from the organized markets there is an immense volume of speculation. If a wholesaler buys only what he can sell to retailers, it is not speculation. But if he buys in excess of the antic.i.p.ated demands of his retailers, expecting to sell the excess at an advance to other wholesalers, he is speculating. If a farmer buys cattle to feed, he is not speculating, but if he buys them thinking to sell them at an advance in a short time, and does so, the transactions are speculative. The line is not easy to draw, in practice. Intention is s.h.i.+fting and uncertain. There is chance in every industrial, commercial, and agricultural operation. But for the point at hand, the test is simple: do more exchanges take place than are necessary, under the existing division of labor, to advance the materials of industry through the stages of production, and get things finally to the consumer? If so, the excess of exchanges is speculative. Trading between men in the same stage of production is speculation. It represents trading to smooth out dynamic changes, to bring about readjustments which would have been unnecessary had conditions really been static, and had the initial plans of enterprisers been adequate. Trading in antic.i.p.ation of further trading with men in the same stage of production is speculative. This sort of thing, in the wholesale business, especially, is exceedingly common. This has been noted by Professor Taussig, and made by him an important point in the theory of crises. Dean Kinley[280] called attention to it as a matter of importance in connection with his investigation in 1896. The coming of cold storage, and the development of the canning industry have, I am informed by a colleague in the Harvard Business School, enormously increased this speculation among both wholesalers and retailers, and it is very important in most wholesale lines. There is short-selling in materials for construction purposes, and in metals, apart from organized exchanges, and, where possible, contractors in the building trade often protect themselves by means of future contracts with speculators who are selling short.

Land speculation, in varying volume, is found in every part of the country. There is speculation in leases, in options on real estate, and in options on leases.[281] It may be noticed, too, that sales of "rights," of puts and calls and straddles, and other contract rights, are regular factors in the organized exchanges. Wherever profits are to be made by leveling values as between different places or different times, speculation arises, and, with dynamic change, this means everywhere, in every business, and all the time! The s.h.i.+fting of labor and capital from industry to industry, leveling returns to capital and labor, involves an enormous amount of trading that would not occur in a "normal equilibrium." Much of this the Stock Exchange does. That is what it is for. But much of it has to do with unincorporated industry, and a vast deal of speculative exchanging takes place to this end apart from the organized exchanges.

Speculation in bills and notes, by note-brokers and particularly by dealers in foreign exchange, occurs on a large scale, and accounts for a great deal of the banking figures. This has nothing to do with physically determined trade. From the standpoint of Professor Fisher's "equation of exchange," it must be barred, if the contention that "trade" is determined by "physical capacities and technique" is to be adhered to. Speculation in demand finance bills is barred in any case, since "money against checks," and "checks against checks," are excluded by his definition.[282] But as an explanation of no small part of our unexplained 245 billions of dollars, these items must be brought in.