Grain Goat

"I am a speculator," wrote Arthur William Cutten in the Satevepost few years ago. "I like to make money. There is a thrill in the actual process unequaled by any emotion a man of my years is apt to experience." Last week spare, tight-lipped Speculator Cutten experienced another emotion. The Federal Government, after examining his grain transactions over a long period, cracked down and bade him show cause why he should not be barred from trading in all U. S. contract markets. No less important a New Dealer than Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, as titular head of the Grain Futures Administration, was Speculator Cutten's inquisitor. The Government's chief complaint was that Speculator Cutten had misreported or failed to report his long and short positions of 500,000 bu. or more, as the Grain Futures Act requires. He had, said the Government, "caused and procured various grain firms and persons, by and through whom his trades . . . were made, to keep false records and to make false reports to the Grain Futures Administration." Covering operations during 1930 and 1931, the charges were specified in 43 citations, listed a total of 319 days on which Mr. Cutten's reports were allegedly inadequate. Not overlooked in the Government's complaint was the old charge of market manipulation. Example: during the last two weeks of January 1931, Mr. Cutten reported open commitments ranging from 600,000 bu. to 705,000 bu. The Government maintained that Mr. Cutten's actual commitments ranged between 2,700,000 bu. and 3,575,000 bu. In high spirits, Secretary Wallace last week referred to Speculator Cutten's Satevepost articles as "an interesting series . . . vigorously opposing all forms of Government regulation of the exchanges and viewing with alarm the operations of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration." "Mr. Cutten," said the Secretary, "is one of our greatest supporters of the law of supply & demand and laissez faire." Bitter in the conviction that he was being singled out as a prominent "goat" for New Deal publicity purposes, Speculator Cutten would say nothing for publication. His office door, which bears the name "Chicago Perforating Co.,"* was barred to newshawks. The grain trade sympathized, quick to believe that the Administration's timing of the Cutten case was simply blatant propaganda in behalf of the bill to regulate commodity exchanges, now in the deep shadow of the Stock Exchange Bill. Testifying before a House Committee, Vice President Robert P. Boylan of the Chicago Board of Trade remarked: "I am not defending Mr. Cutten or his actions, but the publicity . . . given his case while we are here opposing commodity market regulation legislation is unfair. The supposed acts . . . took place in 1930 and 1931. . . . The complaint is based on information which, if you give the Grain Futures Administration the benefit of every doubt, has come into its hands many months and perhaps two or three years ago. The Business Conduct Committee of the Chicago Board of Trade was not informed or advised in any way . . . and was given no opportunity to invoke its disciplinary powers."

* A coal screen manufacturing concern whose real offices are on Chicago's southwest side. The company explained last week that Speculator Cutten is an "active" vice president.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.