TO PREVENT SALE OF COTTON AND GRAIN IN FUTURE MARKETS 13
ery long, it is believed that its enforcement has had a wholesome
ite
Some of our best known economists have poinetd out that future
trading is a field which, though large and important, has had com-
paratively little economic exploration. It is my feeling when called
upon to consider any question connected with our future markets
hat intelligent disposition would be much facilitated if there were
more sound information available.
In the administration of the two statutes above mentioned, the
department is actively studying the available data, with the hope o
eing able to offer from time to time suggestions of a more con-
structive nature for the treatment of problems of this kind. In the
eantime, it feels that the hedging function of the future exchanges
is of real necessity in the present-day developments of our market
for cotton and grain, and that it should not be destroyed until other,
means of accomplishing the same end are discovered and established
w___ Sincerely yours,
Ww . M. JARDINE, Secretary.
STATEMENT OF J. W. T. DUVEL, IN CHARGE OF GRAIN
FUTURES ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICUL-
TURE, WASHINGTON. D.C. adie
Senator RANSDELL. Doctor, please state your position.
The CHAIRMAN. Your name first. REEL
Mr. DuveEL. J. W. T. Duvel, in charge of the grain futures admin- -
istration, Department of Agriculture.
I will speak only from the standpoint of grain, as our work does
not deal with cotton futures.
As the committee knows, of course, we have now a grain futures
act under which we are operating, which act was approved Septem-
ber 21, 1922. This act gives us authority to carry on certain investi-
ations and certain supervisory activities in connection with the
rain exchanges; that is, the grain exchanges that are designated as
ontract markets. All told, there are 10 of these, Chicago, of course,
being the principal one, where approximately 90 per cent of the
rading in futures is carried on.
In the administration of this act we have an office at Chicago, also
an office at Minneapolis, and one at Kansas City. The other contract
markets are feeding their reports into those points.
Under that act, the Secretary of Agriculture is given broad
powers—of course, this committee is familiar with that, because it
passed through the committee—to require certain reports from the
embers of the grain exchanges, designated as contract markets, and
also it gives us access to the records, and we have been working along
hat line and have accomplished some very good results. We recog-
nize in this entire grain exchange problem that there are certai
dvantages to be derived from future trading in the ‘use of hedging
acilities as an insurance facility which the future trading offers.
n this connection, we are making a special study of the hedging b;
country elevators, by growers, by millers, and by grain dealers, an
acilities that the future markets offer in that connection. Unfortu-
ately, many people who are engaged in the grain business do not
