Conversations About Cotton

A little more than a year ago the cotton market took a terrific one-day tumble. Prices dropped nearly $10 per bale in a few hours. Among the many to whom the "March 11th" break caused deep anguish was South Carolina's Senator Ellison DuRant Smith, self-appointed chamberlain to King Cotton. Forthwith, "Cotton Ed" Smith started an investigation which did not make the front page until a year later.

Ponderous Senator Smith has sat in his well-whittled seat longer than any other man in the Senate except William Edgar Borah. He keeps a quid of tobacco in his ample cheek, spits into his Senatorial cuspidor with regularity and precision, speaks for cotton as a cotton grower, heads the

Senate Committee on Agriculture & Forestry. His committee's current investigation is the third that the cotton markets have endured in the last eight years. But no matter what the original purpose of the inquiry authorized, the Senator from South Carolina inevitably diverts it into an investigation of the most famed private citizen in Texas--William L. Clayton, world's biggest cotton merchant.

Anderson. Clayton & Co. can handle 2,000,000 bales of cotton annually, sells cotton in virtually every textile centre on earth. By now Senator Smith has detailed data on about everything Cottonman Clayton ever did since the day he was born in Tupelo, Miss. 56 years ago. Yet the most serious charge that the South Carolinian has ever been able to make is that Cottonman Clayton "dominated" the cotton market.

Delighted, therefore, was Senator Smith last week when Louis Brooks, a member of the New York Cotton Exchange and onetime member of its business conduct committee, uprose at Washington hearings to storm: "The wrong committee is investigating this situation. It ought to be . . . the Department of Justice."

Having thoroughly libeled President John Howard McFadden of the New York Cotton Exchange with accusations of unethical business conduct, Witness Brooks ripped into Cottonman Clayton. Assuring the Senators that Mr. Clayton ran the Cotton Exchange single-handed from his Houston office, the broker declared: "Any reforms on the Exchange must come from legislation, and they must come immediately." Strangled by Cottonman Clayton's domination, the Exchange was "as dead as the mule down on your farm."

What was more, said Witness Brooks,

There has never been an investigation

but what Clayton steps in and takes a

chunk out of the market." He quoted

Mr. Clayton as having said that he was

'almost ashamed" of the way he made

the market pay in 1929. "In 1930 another

investigation was held, and in 1931 he

took another chunk." the witness related.

"I am fearful of what is going to happen next month"

Hopping mad was President McFadden. At his urgent request the New York Cotton Exchange board of managers voted "an exacting, thorough and impartial investigation of himself and his firm." Cottonman Clayton, not overlooking an opportunity to take a crack at his perennial inquisitor, declared: "I deny categorically the reckless, unfounded and malicious statements made by this man Brooks. I just hope he will carry out his threat of taking his charges to the Department of Justice. A fair and impartial examination of the matter can be depended upon there."

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