The foregoing are the principal causes making for high exchange. The causes which make up for low rates must necessarily be to a certain extent merely the converse, but for the sake of clearness they are set down. The division is about as follows: 1. Especially heavy exports of merchandise. 2. Large purchases of our stocks by the foreigners and the placing abroad of blocks of American bonds. 3. Distrust on our part of financial conditions existing at some point abroad where there are carried large deposits of American capital. 4. High money rates here. 5. Unprofitably low loaning rates at some important foreign centre where American bankers ordinarily carry large balances on deposit. 1. Just as unusually large imports of commodities mean a sharp demand for exchange with which to pay for them, unusually large exports mean a big supply of bills. In a previous chapter it has been explained how, when merchandise is shipped out of the country, the shipper draws his draft upon the buyer, in the currency of the country to which the merchandise goes. When exports are heavy, therefore, a great volume of bills of exchange drawn in various kinds of currency comes on the market for sale, naturally depressing rates. Exports continue on a certain scale all through the year, but, like imports, are heavier at some times than others. In the Fall, for instance, when the year's crops are being exported, shipments out of the country invariably reach their zenith, the export nadir being approached in midsummer, when the crop has been mostly exported and shipments of manufactured goods are running light. From the middle of August, when the first of the new cotton crop begins to find its way to the seaport, until the middle of December, when the bulk of the corn and wheat crop exports have been completed, exchange in very great volume finds its way into the New York market. Normally this is the season of low rates, for which reason many shippers of cotton and grain, who know months in advance approximately how much they will ship, contract ahead of time with exchange dealers in New York for the sale of the bills they know they will have. By so doing, shippers are often able to obtain very much better rates. They can then protect themselves, at least, from the extremely low rates which they may be forced to take if they wait and accept going rates at a time when shippers all over the country are trying to sell their bills at the same time. How great is the rush of exchange into market may be seen from the statistics of cotton exports during the period given below. Not all of this cotton goes out during the last four months of the year, but the greater part of it does and, furthermore, cotton, while the most important, is only _one_ of the domestic products exported in the autumn. MONEY VALUE OF COTTON EXPORTED