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THE ATTACK UPON POTATO FUTURES TRADING IN THE UNITED STATES

1963; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0193-9025

Roger W. Gray,

Potato Plant Research

Commodity futures markets, which have had their fullest use and closest regulation in the United States, have recently come under renewed and sustained attack here. Futures markets throughout the world have operated in the face of numerous obstacles, mainly of governmental origin, in the period since World War II, during which many markets were closed or inoperative because of the necessity for temporary abandonment or modification of the pricing systems. (1). Prior to this recent era of uneven resurgence of futures markets, their history, in this country and others, has been checkered with attempts at restrictive or prohibitory legislation, some of which were successful. In the United States, some 200 bills pertaining to futures trading were introduced in Congress between 1880 and 1920, many of them intending to prohibit it. In Germany futures trading was at one time prohibited in a law which was subsequently repealed (2). Most recently futures markets for particular commodities have come under attack here: onion futures trading was prohibited in 1958, in Public Law 85-839, and currently there are bills under consideration to prohibit futures trading in Irish potatoes. The following letter, which appears in the record of hearings on a bill to prohibit futures trading in potatoes, reveals much of the nature of the attack upon that market, and of the earlier successful attack upon the onion futures market (3, pp. 45-46):