Topless Pit

By 9 a.m. the doorman guarding the gallery on the seventh floor of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange began turning visitors away. Inside, jampacked spectators looked down to the trading floor where traders were clustering, half an hour early, around the octagonal steps of the coarse-grains pit. Since September 1943 there had been ceilings on oats and barley and trading had all but died. Now a free market had returned.

In the "pulpit" stood Quotation Recorder Bill Poulden watching the clock. At 9:30, as the grain pits were opening in Chicago and Minneapolis, Poulden rang the gong and the pit burst into a bedlam of shouting and arm-waving.

Up Goes Grain. Tall, aggressive John McDowell, Manitoba legislator-farmer who had campaigned for ending controls and reopening the Exchange, shouted down the rest with his stentorian "Ninety-five for May oats." (The ceiling had been 65-c- a bushel.) Across the pit a hopped-up trader with right fist up, knuckles outward, all fingers clenched (indicating no fractions) shrieked: "Sold!" A boy chalked the quotation on the board. In a few moments, barley opened at $1.25 (May delivery), up 32-c- from a 93-c- ceiling.

In the first half-hour all futures were high because of buying by feed companies, barley maltsters and porridge makers. Then the market softened and closed at the day's lows, with almost 20,000,000 bushels sold. Next day, most futures were lower again, though .they stayed far above former ceilings.

Up Goes Meat. The shouts in the pit sent echoes across the prairies. Many farmers were angry because ceilings were lifted after most of their harvest had been sold. Others who had gambled on the lifting of ceilings and withheld their crop were sitting pretty, with paper profits of 20-c- to 35-c- a bushel.

Directors of the United Farmers of Alberta demanded that the Dominion Government halt Exchange trading in coarse grains, put all buying through the Canadian Wheat Board (which now buys virtually all wheat). In Saskatchewan, Agriculture Minister James Gardiner said: "I am sympathetic to the idea." He was confident that if there were abuses in Exchange trading, the Government would ask Parliament for authority to do what U.F.A. asked.

Livestock feeders had been worried over the end of ceilings, and even more because many grain growers refused to sell before prices went up. By week's end, feeders felt better; stored grain was coming into the market, and prices for beef cattle were rising enough to absorb higher feed costs. The prairies stirred under the dangerous tonic of rising prices.

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