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