On the boards of trade the commission merchants may be wholly apart from any risk in even the legitimate trading, taking the commission of one-eighth of a cent a bushel in buying and selling. On the Board of Trade of Chicago the designated leading speculative articles, in their order, are wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, mess pork, lard, short ribs, live hogs and cotton. A year's grain crop may be 650,000,000 bushels of wheat, 2,500,000,000 bushels of corn, 900,000,000 bushels of oats, 150,000,000 bushels of barley, and 30,000,000 bushels of rye. Bucket shops have been condemned by statutes as criminal and pernicious in many states in the Union, but anti-bucket shop laws are rarely enforced by public servants whose duty it is to enforce them. Prosecutions thus far, except in Illinois, have been left to private citizens or associations for the suppression of gambling. The "bucket shop" has, within a few years past, sprung from comparative inconsequence into an institution of formidable wealth and threatening proportions. There are nearly a thousand in the United States. Every large city in the west has at least one. Having banded together in a strong combination they sneer at legislation. Opulent and powerful they scoff at antagonistic public opinion. ON LEVEL WITH LOTTERY AND FARO BANK. The "bucket shop," like the lottery and the faro bank, finds its profits in its customers' losses. If its patrons "buy" wheat and wheat goes up, the "bucket shop" loses. Many a bucket shop commission merchant would hardly know wheat from oats, and none of their grain and produce "exchanges" ever had a sample bag on its counters. Their transactions are wagers and their existence is an incitement to gambling under the guise of commercial transactions. The pernicious influences of the gaming house are, in the bucket shop, surrounded by the allurement of a cloak of respectability and the assumption of business methods. The legitimate exchange is a huge time and labor saving machine. Its benefits are universal. While its privileges are valuable they have been rendered so only by hard work, and its members are entitled to the protection of the state against thieves. The "bucket shop" is a thief. The quotations upon which the "bucket shop" trades are the product of the labor and intelligence and information of the exchange. The exchange gathers its news at great cost from all over the globe and disseminates it for public advantage. But its quotations should be its own property. They are the direct product of its energy, its foresight and its business sagacity. The "bucket shop," at no parallel cost, usurps the functions of the exchange and endeavors to secure for itself the returns for a labor performed by others. Were it to use honorable methods with its patrons it would be a dishonorable institution. Using the methods it does, the "bucket shop" is twice dishonored.