Word: corn
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Henry Wallace came from Iowa, where he was the editor of Wallace's Farmer, the journal founded by his Republican grandfather. He was friend and spokesman of the men of the soil, the exponent of scientific farming. He was a dreamer, and a scientist who developed a hybrid corn. Franklin Roosevelt made him his Secretary of Agriculture and he went to Washington -a shy, humble man with a cowlick, who once put himself on an exclusive diet of soybeans just to prove a point. He proved that soybeans are not enough...
...Chicago retailer exclaimed: "New York gets discouraged by a seven-point drop in the stockmarket but by the time the flash gets here, we're only two points discouraged. Five points get lost in the Illinois corn...
...were the most difficult to harvest within living memory. Prayers for sunshine went unanswered. England's' wheat was a rain-beaten tangle. Under the headline "The Afflictions of Thy People," a London Daily Express bulletin read like a litany of the counties, intoned over drowned hopes: "Norfolk: . . . Corn in stook too wet to be carted. Hopes run low. Devon: Crops ruined; corn sprouting. Somerset: Corn lands waterlogged. . . . Hertfordshire: Fields are as squelching as in winter. . . . Surrey: Position serious. Crops deteriorating daily. . . . Suffolk: No work is possible. . . . Yorkshire: East Riding farmers have worked after sunshine and a drying wind...
General Foods, said the referee, first went into the rye market in December 1942 (General Foods' reason: to hedge against losses in wheat and corn). General Foods' Executive Vice President Charles W. Metcalf bought so heavily in rye and rye futures (i.e., contracts to receive rye at a future date) that by December 31, 1943 General Foods was close to having a corner with 76% of all the deliverable rye in Chicago. The worried Chicago Board of Trade meanwhile got Metcalf to promise that General Foods would buy no more rye without the board's consent...
...Agriculture is also in decay. Many farmers have been pauperized and have abandoned their farms. . . . Capitalist trusts destroy grain and burn corn in engines in order to raise the price of grain and flour...