Cotton Crop

Completed last week by the young New Orleans cotton house of Tullis, Craig & Co. was one of the smartest cotton market operations in many a moon. It was not a spectacular coup. Indeed Partner Garner H. Tullis tried to pooh-pooh accumulating gossip with a signed statement: "I wish to state in regard to the so-called operations of our firm in December that the entire story has been greatly exaggerated both in magnitude and effect."

Weeks ago, foreseeing a shortage in good grades of spot cotton, Tullis, Craig started to buy December contracts, which are contracts calling for delivery in that month. In the normal course of trading on a cotton futures market, little if any lint is actually delivered. Those who sold cotton short either as a hedge or as a speculation simply buy back their contracts, bringing everybody out even without the bother of handling the staple at all. Messrs. Tullis & Craig, however, demanded real cotton. This they had a perfect right to do, but when the word first spread through the trade early this month, it caused a scramble for the necessary bales. Cotton prices in the past fortnight jumped 1-c- per lb., giving the South a $10,000,000 Christmas present. Profit for Messrs. Tullis & Craig, loss for those who had to deliver, lay in the fact that good spot cotton had risen more than future cotton because of the insatiable demand from mills (November cotton consumption was 627,000 bales, equal to the all-time record for that month).

Among the people who had to stand & deliver was Will Clayton of the great Houston firm of Anderson, Clayton & Co. Up to the very deadline last week it was hoped by others who were pinched that somehow, somewhere, Will Clayton might use his vast resources to extricate them from their fix. But in the end Mr. Clayton sent over some of his best lint, which Messrs. Tullis & Craig promptly sold at a handsome profit.

Shrewd New Orleans cotton men guessed that Messrs. Tullis & Craig had cleaned up nearer $200,000 than the $2,000,000 which was reported. Brisk, fortyish Partner Tullis is Commodore of the Southern Yacht Club, second in age in the U. S. only to the New York Yacht Club. Starting as an office boy, Mississippi-born Garner Tullis became a cotton firm clerk, then a trader, then one of the most astute traders on the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. He was Rex, King of Carnival in the 1935 Mardi Gras, highest social honor in the city. Partner Robert E. Craig II is 38, tall, slim, and a crack contract player who enters big tournaments with his wife.

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