Smyrna times., 1937-02-11
SOY BEANS NOW
IN GRAIN PITS
First Legumes To Be Featur-
ed in Futures, Trad
ing With Grain
AS DAILY PIT DRAMA


ago, becoming the first legume, or
pod-bearing plant, to join the grains
featured for futures" trading
''The new commodity, a natural
lied Chinese immigrant, has had
less than ten years stardom in the
pageant of American agriculture,
says the National Geographic So
ciety. "Yet last year it brought
home more bacon than did either
barley or oats. This year it leaps
to the center of the stage beside
grains which discovered America
soon after Columbus.
Like the grains, each soy bean
crop will hereafter find its way in
to the market channels of a nation
by the daily drama of the Pit,
staged within the building of Chi
cago's Board of Trade. In name
only are grains and beans present
in its paneled oak trading hall. Silo-
high and more than barn-broad, the
huge room has no farming connec-
tions except by telephone. Its har-
vesting implements are clicking tel
egraph keys and blackboards on
W ch fortunes are feverishly
chalked up and as feverishly
erased. Futures" the contracts
for crops sold now but yet unseen
or implanted, ripen by the light of
tall windows rising five stories high
and chandelier 40 feet in dame
ter.
Bought and Sold by Hand.
Visitors in the galleries may
watch this noisy many-ring circus
of marketing by remote control. The
rings are the pits, one each for
wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, etc.
Wheat, because it travels well and
bakes best, performs its price
jumps in the largest ring. The pits
are enclosed craters sunk in the
floor, seething with traders. Their
major eruptions are noted in his
tory as panics.
1.-The clamor of commerce pro-
duces such a din that the trader
must resort to sign language to
make himself heard His hand lifted
vertically, to signal the quantity of
grain in the transaction, gives him,
let us say, $4,000 bushels for better
or worse. Fingers extended hori-
zontally govern prices. The flick of
a thumb in Chicago may determine
whether the housewife in California
will soon count out penny more
or less at the grocery.
Similar trading in crop futures
takes place on the grain markets
Of Winnipeg, Liverpool and Buenos
Aires, and in this country in Mime
apolis, Kansas City, Duluth, st. Lou
is, Milwaukee, Portland and New
York city. But Chicago holds the
key to the grain bin of the United
States. Since 1848, when merchants
gathered upstairs over flour store
to fix cereal prices, it has been al
most continuously the worlds lead
ing grain exchange.
"Converging lines of steel, which
make Chicago the foremost railroad
hub in the country, garner the grain
from every direction. Six times
cultivated by the steam-roller ef-
feet of glaciers, and enriched al
most daily by the swift alienation
- 70 in thn RI n
countryside has the greatest total
value of farm property in the United
States.
Thrives in Illinois.
1.-The soy bean, latest satellite to
the grain galaxy, thrives best in
Illinois, which produces as much as
all the other AZ states put together.
The rapidly expanding bean belt in
cludes Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.
Any soy bean census, however, is
probably incomplete, for much of
its acreage is distributed in small
patches on large farms. where it
gives the good earth rest and a
square meal of fertilizer, or where
it offers new kind of green pas
lures to corn-fed hogs. The hay is
even now encouraging some of the
nations livestock to face a hard
winter.
'aThe versatile bean has been
ground into meal with bread as its
final destination, or such fioury COM
pounds as macaroni and crackers.
American factories are now making
soy sauce which has been and still
is imported in large quantities from
the Orient.
''Soy bean oil has been success
fully initiated into the paint indus
try, and now may paint the barn
that houses its hay. as well as the
truck that hauled it to market.
Waterproofing for cloth, size for pa
per, and glue are some of the other
forms in which the bean is service
able. When ground up, it can be-
mixed into pasty plastic, and used
as a substitute for celluloid and
hard rubber. The purchasing pub
lie may be entertaining soy beans
unaware in fountain pens, ash trays,
chocolate candy, or linoleum.
1.-The United States is still second
in soy bean culture to Manchu-