fference between a purchase of coffee and one of a
future month on options.

The experience gained here and abroad demonstrates that any check
placed upon such dealings is detrimental, with far-reaching effects
upon the whole body of the trade. Unquestionably the Exchange is a
powerful factor as a regulator of extremes in the market.

The experience gained in Germany, where an embargo was placed upon
transactions in futures, is illuminating. The disastrous effects
were so plain that the authorities were forced to abandon their
objections and permit a resumption of the business along the old
lines.

But a good thing can be abused, and the opportunity to gamble in
options availed of by so many is the increment that disturbs the
legitimacy of the market and creates the opposition to the whole
proposition. When the Exchange is ready to insist that every
transaction in futures must be a legitimate one, and that every
trader under its jurisdiction using the facilities of the Exchange
is made to realize that any operations that are purely of a
gambling nature will subject him to severe discipline, then the
Coffee Exchange will begin to stem the tide of an ever-growing
opposition by the general public.

[Illustration: THE "COFFEE AFLOAT" BLACKBOARD]

The New York State legislative committee on speculations in securities
and commodities had the following to say on the Coffee Exchange in its
report to Governor Charles E. Hughes in 1909:

It [the Coffee Exchange] was established in order to supply a daily
market where coffee could be bought and sold and to fix quotations
therefor, in distinction from the former method of alternate glut
and scarcity, with wide variations in price--in short, to create
stability and certainty in trading in an important article of
commerce. This it has accomplished; and it has made New York the
most important primary coffee market in the United States. But
there has been recently introduced a non-commercial factor known as
"valorization," a governmental scheme of Brazil, by which the
public treasury has assumed to purchase and hold a certain
percentage of the coffee grown there, in order to prevent a decline
of the price. This has created abnormal conditions in the coffee
trade.

All transactions must be reported by the seller