As wheat Exchange cities, London, Liverpool, and Chicago outclass all others. Neither Italy nor France have any central or dominating market. In Paris, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Amsterdam the Bourses, as the Exchanges are called, are public buildings, and the members of each Bourse represent the local situation and nothing more. One of the most ambitious and speculative of the European Exchanges is the one at Budapest, which stands beside a dainty little park where the brokers eat their lunch in fine weather; and the youngest of all Exchanges is the one that was born in Buenos Ayres in 1908, representing a surplus of a hundred million bushels a year. Besides the brokers, in their Exchanges, there must also be inspectors in the marketing of the wheat. In some countries these inspectors are government officers, as in Germany and Canada; and elsewhere they are local officials or private employees, as in the United States. A carload of wheat, passing from Dakota to New York, will probably have from three to six inspections. [Illustration: HARVESTING IN ROUMANIA] Also, the insurance agent takes his place in the circle of co-operation when the wheat begins to move from barn to bakery. He insures the wheat in the elevators, on the cars, or in the steamships. He may even insure it against hail and tornadoes while it is growing. It is so precious, this brown seed, that we watch over every step of its progress. It is the bankers' busy season, too, when the wheat begins to move. The marketing of the grain ties up more money than any other yearly event. "It threatens us with disaster every fall," said one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, when making a plea for a more elastic currency. "We ship half a million dollars a day during harvest," said the president of a Chicago bank. "We drew more than five millions of currency from the East and sent thirty-eight millions to the country during September and October of last year," said a third financier, who spoke for Chicago as a whole. In short, the movement of the wheat means a matter of five hundred millions to American bankers; and it is the most important occurrence of the year to the bankers of Russia, Canada, Argentina, and Australia. Many a bank, as well as many a railroad, was founded upon the moving of the wheat. The broker, the banker, the inspector, and the insurance agent--these four render a useful service to the wheat that has left home; but there is a fifth man about whose usefulness there is the widest possible difference of opinion--the speculator. From one point of view, the speculator is the driving-wheel of the whole wheat trade. By his energy and his impetus he steadies and equalizes the conflicting forces, and gives the entire mechanism a continuous movement. From another point of view, he is a gambler, reckless and parasitical, who interferes with the natural laws of supply and demand, and snatches an unearned toll from the wheat bins of the world.