The Board of Trade has to do with both cash grain and future trading. So far as prices are concerned, the cash market is supposed to be less sensitive than the market for futures. The business of the future market is to register changing conditions as promptly and accurately as possible. Occasionally, however, artificial situations develop. For instance, in a year of a very good corn crop, a large number of speculators may have sold December corn “short” at around $1.20 a bushel. At the time of the sale, they may have had every reason to believe that they could eventually buy the actual grain for less than this price when the month of December finally arrived. Then gradually transportation difficulties began to grow and bad weather came on, and altho there might be an enormous crop in the country, there would be very little corn in Chicago. Then certain other speculators might go to work buying large quantities of December corn futures, knowing that other men were “short” a long line of December corn at $1.20. These speculators might not actually want the corn, but nevertheless, by playing the technique of the market, might be able to create a “squeeze” and force the price of corn up to $1.50 a bushel before permitting the “shorts” to settle. And this might happen in spite of the fact that by January 2d there might be enough actual corn coming into Chicago to enable cash corn to be sold as low as $1.20. The object of this book is neither to praise nor condemn the speculative system as a method for registering prices of farm products. We are pointing out the strong points in the present system. Idealistic social workers, representatives of organized labor, and many farmers, would like to do away with the speculative system of registering prices. They would like to substitute therefor price-fixing legislation. These people, as a rule, are densely ignorant of the legitimate price-making forces, and it is impossible that they should be able to shape a price-registering machinery superior to that which we now have.[2] One reason for the writing of this book is the belief that organized farmers and organized labor, working in conjunction with certain idealists, will make an effort to modify our present price-registering system. We are heartily in sympathy with such an effort, for the speculative system is far from perfect. But it is such a delicate system of registering prices that we believe that even the most virulent opponents should allow the system to run unchecked for a good many years yet, in order that they may study its functions more carefully. Here is a great field of research for the economists, who for some unknown reason have failed to study Board of Trade prices during the past fifty years as closely as they should. Improvement on our present system can be made only after a thoroly scientific and dispassionate study of its strength and weakness. THREE PRICE-MAKING FORCES