Business: Cutten to Canada

In Guelph, Ontario, 61 years ago was horn Arthur William Cutten, Chicago’s big stock & commodity bull. Notoriously unschooled in taking profits, he has not been very active since the Crash. Last week he made news by heading back toward his native Canada. He moved one branch of his business from Chicago to Winnipeg, from the Board of Trade to the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.

Five years ago Speculator Cutten charged that Government interference was hurting the Board of Trade. Last week, buying a seat on the Winnipeg exchange for $12,600, he repeated this charge, also protested that the Board of Trade has many rules hurting buyers. Winnipeg, said he, “is the only free market on the continent.” Elated, Winnipeg traders hoped other big grainmen would follow Bull Cutten. They arranged a demonstration for his arrival. Members of the Chicago Board of Trade last week gloomily observed that their seats now sell at $9,000 against a high of $62,000 in 1929; that the securities division averages only 6,600 shares a day, that corn occupies the main Pit, that Government-pegged May wheat sells 7¢ higher than in Winnipeg. Also last week, Board of Trade members heard with exasperation that at the University of Illinois Agricultural College Federal farm, Chairman Alexander Legge of the Federal Farm Board, repeating to 3,000 farmers his cry that short-selling of grain must be abolished, had said: “[the futures contract] is a system 80 years old, and a system that is not functioning properly. If it were, the Farm Board would not be in the field today.”