The Cooperative Threat

Cooperative marketing, which in a raw form had materialised during WWI when the US Food Administration replaced the grain middlemen, was considered an existential threat to the CBOT and other exchanges. The threat grew throughout the 1920s, strengthening in 1929 when the Federal Farm Board supported cooperatives over private grain concerns. The idea that farmers should help themselves was in the front of Hoover’s mind when he was Secretary of Commerce and this also appealed to him when US President. In the 1920s, even business leaders supported cooperatives trying to lower the costs of grain marketing.⁶⁶

64 Clipping, Hoover address on the regulation of business. 4 March, 1929. CME III.12.8.

65 Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from its Founding to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 78.

66 Journal, The Basic Farmer’s Question, 11 September 1920. CME.III.ss1.6.

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Republicans were in favour of government support for farmers as long as policies were facilitative and were not taxpayer-funded nor directly subsidised by the consumer. A popular support initiative was to encourage farmer-owned cooperatives, which were intended to handle grain from the farm to the end user, with the profits being returned to those who utilised the service – a mechanism known as ‘patronage dividends’.⁶⁷ Julius Barnes, Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Henry C Wallace were supportive of the cooperative movement gaining access to the CBOT.⁶⁸ The CBOT, however, saw that these non-profit cooperatives had the potential to undercut profit-driven members. Furthermore, a farmer-owned supply chain might be able to bypass both cash and futures markets completely, dealing directly with large buyers. As such, CBOT president Griffin warned Barnes away from such ‘proposed idealistic schemes, which are bound to have the inevitable effect of destroying competition’.⁶⁹ The CBOT especially – unlike some other exchanges – saw the cooperatives as a dangerous business monopoly and/or a socialist revolution, and put up a long and fierce battle to ban them from the exchanges where they would need to hedge and/or transact in grain on behalf of their owners. Some powerful members believed that cooperatives would ‘seriously injure the general grain business as conducted’ and that the rules of the CBOT needed to be strengthened to prevent their entrance into the membership.⁷⁰ While it was feared that, if encouraged,

cooperatives would grow to dominate the grain trade, the most immediate threat was a cut in the otherwise fixed commissions on the Board. Patronage dividends violated the Board rule against commission rebating, itself obviously oligopolistic. The CBOT defence was that rules were rules, even if restrictive of trade, ignoring the fact that all rules could, of course, be changed if the membership desired. Nevertheless, cooperatives would be allowed only as long as they did not rebate commissions. On 27 June 1921 the National Grain Dealers’ Association announced the formation of an organisation, with a budget of $250,000, to fight any proposed farm relief

67 Pamphlet, The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company Act, Together with an Explanation of Its Provisions, (The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company, Ltd., Revised December, 1915). CME III.665.5.

68 Letter Griffin to Barnes, 7 July 1921. CME III.ss1.7; Donald L. Winters, “The Persistence of

Progressivism: Henry Cantwell Wallace and the Movement for Agricultural Economics,” Agricultural History 41.2: 109-120, p. 114.

69 Letter, J Griffin to Julius Barnes, 7 July 1921. CME III.ss1.7.

70 Letter, James E Bennett to LF Gates, 23 June 1920. CME III.ss1.6; Letter, Bennett to Gates, 14 June 1920. CME III.ss1.6.

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legislation, with its first task being ‘an active campaign against the United States Grain Growers Inc., a newly organised national [farmers’] cooperative marketing company’.⁷¹

Thus the CBOT found itself isolated in the fight against cooperatives, and this stance did not go unnoticed; even those highly sympathetic to the grain marketers were critical of the exchange.

Senator Kenyon submitted a Resolution (SR 110) to examine ‘any threats to cooperative marketing’.⁷² On 24 October 1922, Alexander Legge, president of the International Harvester Company and eventual head of the Federal Farm Bureau, addressed a large crowd, which included Julius Barnes and financier Bernard Baruch.⁷³ While the crowd was supportive of the CBOT in general, the speech itself was highly critical of the exchange. Legge complained that;

The great American farmer who furnishes the grain that has kept the exchanges alive all these years is to be denied a membership on the principal exchange; he is not good enough to join this holy sanctuary at the end of La Salle Street!⁷⁴

Legge was appalled that cooperatives that were trying to help the farmer without the benefit of public funding should be so poorly treated by the CBOT, warning that ‘the farmer will get a full measure of public sympathy and support later on, and when he does there will be somebody else asking for sympathy’.⁷⁵ Yet the membership had nothing to gain from voting in these farmer-sponsored competitors to break the current monopoly, and so the CBOT fought the battle against cooperatives on many sides. In a 1921 brochure entitled Farming the Farmer, the cooperative firm United States Grain Growers Inc. was accused of (i) attempting to be more economical than the most economical system in the world, as stated by Herbert Hoover, (ii) having gotten into such financial trouble it needed bailing out from its members, and (iii) being profligate in having expensive offices and paying high salaries.⁷⁶ When cooperatives attempted to join the CBOT, the exchange appealed to the courts and obtained a temporary restraining order in September 1921 against the enforcement of the Missouri State Co-operative Law. Exchange presidents Griffin and Hargis were both delighted with the outcome.⁷⁷

71 Clipping, US Congress. Draft Senate Resolution SR 110, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, CME III.ss1.8.

72 Ibid.

73 Invitation to an American Farm Bureau Federation Luncheon, James R Howard, president, 24 October 1922. CME III.2.646.5.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.

76 Joseph Griffin, Brochure ‘Farming the Farmer’, 31 May 1921. CME III.ss2.664.2.

77 Letter, J Griffin to BL Hargis, President, Kansas City Board of Trade, 23 September 1921. CME III.ss1.8.

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The cooperative movement was gaining momentum, however. By 1921, the newly-formed American Farm Bureau Federation was making very public demands on both parties through the Farm Bloc. Many were supportive of Legge’s arguments of 24 October.⁷⁸ The exchanges were not helped by the passage of the Capper-Volstead Act, which recognised the social usefulness of farmer cooperatives by exempting them from certain sections of the Sherman Act.⁷⁹ Important CBOT member, James Bennett, was ‘greatly impressed by the prevalence of Farm Bureau signs in Iowa and the Prairie Farmers Association in the State of Illinois.’⁸⁰ The well connected LC Stevens wrote to Gates that he felt the pro-cooperative legislators in 1920 were not necessarily anti-futures. Stevens sent up a speech, published in the New York Times, to Minneapolis farmers from gubernatorial candidate Senator Harding that cooperatives must be allowed memberships of the exchanges, but noted that ‘there is nothing destructive about that’.⁸¹ Bennett wrote to Gates in 1921 that ‘the Board of Trade will have a harder battle at the next Legislature than it had at the last, and to this end I would suggest that some effort be made to build up a war chest for a red hot campaign about next election time or shortly prior thereto’.⁸²

The fight against cooperative marketing affected both CBOT and government policy throughout the entire interwar period. By December 1922, the end of the period covered in the next

chapter, the cooperatives had started their own lobby group in Washington, based on a meeting of a National Council of Farmers Cooperative Marketing Associations.⁸³ On 12 December 1922, EH Cunningham, president of the US Grain Growers, Inc. in a speech to the Fourth Annual Convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Chicago, stated:

‘[When] the exchanges announced they would fight the constitutionality of the Capper-Tincher bill […] our application [to the CBOT] was turned down as was the application at Omaha, and the widely heralded statement that we would be welcome […] became a scrap of paper […] They have deceived us […]Legislation should compel admission of lawful

78 Invitation to an American Farm Bureau Federation luncheon, James R Howard, president, 24 October 1922. CME III.2.646.5.

79 Clipping, Chamber of Commerce Congressional Record, Bills Which Became Law Between 5 December 1921 and September 22, 1922 Status: passed House, 5-4-21: passed Senate, 2-8-22; House concurred in Senate amendments, 2-II-22; approved by the President, 2-18-22. (Public No. 146). CME III.ss2.645.4.

80 Letter, James E Bennett to J Griffin, 6 September 1921. CME III.ss1.7.

81 Letter, LC Stevens to LF Gates, 7 October 1920. CME III.ss1.6.

82 Letter, Bennett to Griffin, 6 September 1921. CME III.ss1.7.

83 Letter, PW MacMillan to Secretary, Omaha Grain Exchange, 4 November 1922. CME III.652.5.

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producer-owned companies to the grain exchanges […] Let us have a little more light on the practices of those who deal in our own products’. ⁸⁴

Indeed, thanks to the passing of the Grain Futures Act, more transparency is exactly what they got, even though the cooperative battle for admission dragged on for many more years.

2.4 The Information Deficit

In 1920, futures markets remained poorly understood by farmers and their representatives such that hedging was rarely if ever used by producers and hardly common amongst country elevators.

Because no one was collecting and analysing data, knowledge levels were low throughout the land, even among so-called experts. The president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in 1920 did not even understand how hedging worked.⁸⁵ Indeed, nobody even knew if hedgers were actually reducing risk, given the severe and abrupt fluctuations that could occur in absolute wheat prices and in the ‘basis’; the price difference between cash and futures, futures of different months, of the same futures contract on different exchanges.

Attempts to placate those who would often lose money trading or hedging, or simply could not comprehend the irrationality of markets failed due to the lack of shared knowledge. The archives are littered with letters to politicians, bureaucrats and industry executives from those without sufficient knowledge to understand the cause and effect of the markets, let alone the complicated and intricate details.⁸⁶ The CBOT often appealed to government officials to intervene in private disputes in order to explain the facts to plaintiffs and publics.⁸⁷

Whenever futures markets were seen to be in danger of being heavily constrained or even regulated out of existence, defenders claimed that the farmers were the primary beneficiaries of the Chicago pits. In this regard, the academics of the era attempted to legitimise fully the futures industry by regularly repeating the hedging motivation for futures trading. Emery in 1896 was the first to attach an economic justification to the speculation in futures markets, and his tome

84 Address of EH Cunningham, US Grain Growers Inc. to the American Farm Bureau Association, 12 December 1922. NARA/KC, 101-1-1.

85 Letter, JR Howard, President American Farm Bureau Federation to LF Gates, 12 July 1920. CME III.ss1.6.

86 See NARA/KC. 14-6 for hundreds of such documents.

87 Letter LF Gates to Alfred Brandeis, Chief, Cereal Enforcement Division, US Food Administration, Washington D.C., 5 November 1919. CME III.ss1.6; Letter, Thomson McKinnon to Gates, 18 October 1919. CME III.ss1.6.

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was the leading source on futures theory for forty years, according to one of the leading experts of the interwar period.⁸⁸ The respected academic G Wright Hoffman, wrote: ‘Either directly or indirectly, the primary source of [treatises on speculation in economics textbooks and futures analysis] is Emery’.⁸⁹ Alfred Marshall and possibly John Maynard Keynes also borrowed heavily from Emery in the interwar years.⁹⁰ In 1937, Hoffman summarised Emery as follows:

Organised exchanges provide a special class of speculators who carry the price risks of merchants and manufacturers. Through this facility, these trade interests are able to hedge or insure themselves against price hazards and in turn narrow their margin of profit to benefit the consumer or producer or both.⁹¹

This can be seen in the legal record as well as the political one. In his Christie decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that, without adequate evidence to the contrary, the default view of the courts should be that ‘natural evolutions of a complex society are to be touched only by a very cautious hand’.⁹² Representative Tincher, in introducing the Capper-Tincher Bill, which eventually became the 1922 Grain Futures Act, argued that:

The only one absolutely in favor of entirely abolishing the legitimate hedge, I think, is a man who does not know what a legitimate hedge is. I do not think any good-thinking man in the United States is in favor of preventing the farmer from selling his wheat for future delivery.⁹³ The CBOT sometimes took its battles with legislators public, and rhetoric and normative theory rather than empirical observations were used to legitimise Board activities. In one article in 1922, Secretary John Mauff used the hedging justification for futures, specifically claiming that this

‘commercial price insurance’ resulted in a higher price for farmers.⁹⁴ He added that, ‘The committee on economic research of Harvard University […] has expressed through its chairman the opinion that [government interference] could not have any effect but to react injuriously

88 William Falloon and Patrick Arbor, Market Maker: A Sesquicentennial Look at the Chicago Board of Trade (Chicago: Chicago Board of Trade, 1998), p. 68.

89 George Wright Hoffman, Future Trading upon Organized Commodity Markets in the United States (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932), p. 300.

90 Marco Dardi and Marco Gallegati, “Alfred Marshall on Speculation,” History of Political Economy, 24 (Fall 1992): 571-594, p. 578.

91 George Wright Hoffman, Future Trading upon Organized Commodity Markets in the United States (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932), p. 301.

92 Board of Trade v. Christie 198 U.S. pp. 247-8.

93 US Congress, House, Cong. Rec. Futures Trading: Hearings before the Committee on Agriculture: Remarks of Representative Tincher, 67^th Cong. 1^st Sess. 1921, p. 7.

94 Clipping, John R Mauff, “1922 Brings Unmistakable Signs of Business Improvement- Professional Agitator Losing Prestige in Farmers’ Eyes,” The Country Grain Supply, Undated. CME III.2.650.4.

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upon the farmers.’⁹⁵ But where was the evidence for such conclusions? Before Federal Government intervention, there was not enough information to make any claims about the futures markets.

The exchanges also defended themselves with the help of other academics and their research:

‘Some of the best articles we used in the Grain Futures litigation were from the compilation referred to by Dr. Huebner […] and the [1911] Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences’.⁹⁶ Professor Heubner was seen as a valuable ally, and in 1923 ‘it would seem that he should be encouraged and given assistance’.⁹⁷ The editor of the Annals, Dr. Clyde L King, commissioned a volume for the Academy that in 1923 Heubner himself had said:

Should nevertheless be thoroughly constructive in character and the purpose of the volume would be primarily to set public opinion right on practices which you know the great majority of non-participants in our markets do not understand, and therefore thoughtlessly oppose.⁹⁸ The Board appreciated the benefits of the academic record favouring futures markets, especially from Harvard University, with Mauff stating at the end of 1922, ‘After the first of the year, we must get together with all of these professors and give them more cooperation, and that will be one of the things that I will look forward to with pleasure’.⁹⁹

Today, it is hard to imagine a world price-setting futures market not distributing timely quotes or other key market metrics, but such was the case before the mid-1920s. Early in the interwar period, before the protections of the 1922 Act, the CBOT was paranoid over its future existence.

The idea that the Grain Futures Act was primarily an information gathering tool was stated accurately and concisely by the USDA in a press release on 20 April 1923 on the upholding of the Act by the Supreme Court. The release stated ‘the law gives authority to observe and inquire into the operations on grain exchanges and to speak with authority concerning such matters’.¹⁰⁰ As was in the case of other markets – insurance bureaus, for example – in 1923 the data required

95 Ibid.

96 Letter, AC Wied to Mauff, 6 April 1923. CME III.659.2,

97 Ibid.

98 Letter, SS Huebner to JJ Fones, CBOT Secretary, 29 March 1923. CME III.659.2.

99 Letter, Mauff to A Clement Wild, Counsel to CBOT with Robbins and Townley, undated, circa December 1922. CME III.659.3.

100 CME III.667.6, USDA Press Release, “Grain Futures Trading To Continue”, 20 April 1923.

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to begin to understand how futures markets truly functioned, and therefore improved, thus began to be accumulated.¹⁰¹