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SUMMARY:Going beyond ‘market versus state’: ideological struggles in e
 xplaining the existence and longevity of the 1922 Grain Futures Act  - Ras
 heed Saleuddin\, Corpus Christi\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20150202T170000Z
DTEND:20150202T183000Z
UID:TALK55290@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Duncan Needham
DESCRIPTION:A master of the spoken and written word\, on the eve of the pa
 ssing of the first Federal Government Law to regulate futures trading in G
 rain\, Senator Capper from Kansas addressed Congress in 1921 as follows\, 
 ‘Mr. President\, … today\, under the cloak of business respectability\
 , we are permitting the biggest gambling hell in the world to be operated 
 on the Chicago Board of Trade’ (61 Cong. Rec. 4761\, 1921).\nCurrent and
  contemporary literature views the early regulations of the 1922 Grain Fut
 ures Act as the result of ‘an orgy of populist rhetorical excess’ to e
 liminate as much free market capitalism as possible from the way the grain
  trade operated (Stassen 1982).  Tellingly\, however\, the President of th
 e Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) wrote in a confidential memo to the Secret
 ary\, ‘The plain and simple facts are.. the bill is drafted substantiall
 y as we wished’.\nMy paper describes the interactions between the stakeh
 olders (the Grain Trade\, the CBOT\, key legislators and the Department of
  Agriculture) and juxtaposes their actions to the growing anti-Grain Trade
  rhetoric extant at the time and evidenced at the quasi-public Hearings an
 d in the press. I comment specifically on the non-existence of the voice o
 f the farmer in the very private conversations in Washington\, Kansas City
  and Chicago.   I conclude that the early legislation was welcomed if not 
 explicitly demanded by the grain exchanges\, and\, perhaps coincidentally\
 , the weak powers granted to the Grain Futures Administration served to pr
 event future regulation from restricting  speculation in Grains during the
  post-Great War agricultural depression as well as the subsequent Great De
 pression.  
LOCATION:Darwin College (Seminar Room\, No. 1 Newnham Terrace - entrance v
 ia Porters Lodge on Silver St)
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