How to Make a Buck

The "memo to the press" indicated that the Government was about to buy large quantities of lard for export. The memo had been put on a table with a pile of official releases, in the Department of Agriculture's Washington newsroom, one day last fall. But there was something phony about it: it had none of the usual headings or signatures. When newsmen questioned its authorship, the Department began investigating and finally traced it to a commodity trader named Ralph W. Moore, onetime lobbyist and crony of Oklahoma's Senator Elmer Thomas, who also likes to speculate in commodities.

Trader Moore frankly confessed that he had written the memo, but said that his purpose was merely to call attention to "inconsistencies in Government lard purchase policies." The Department's Commodity Exchange Authority thought differently. Last week it charged that the memo was a trick of Moore's to spread false reports and boost prices for his own profit. At the time the memo was issued, said CEA, Moore was "long" (i.e., betting that the price would go up) on 1,900,000 pounds of lard futures. In the preceding 21 months, added CEA, Moore had made $445,000 trading in commodity futures.

CEA gave Moore 20 days to show cause why he should not be banned from further commodity trading. (He also faces possible criminal penalties of a $10,000 fine and a year in jail.)

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