Word: grains
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rosenbaum Grain Corp. has one of the largest storage capacities (18,000,000 bu.) of any grain house in the U. S. On busy days fast-talking Manny Rosenbaum. a cigaret hanging on his nether lip, keeps the grain pit lively with his orders. On dull days the pit brokers sometimes amuse themselves at his expense by parodying the German melody "O Tannenbaum" with loud choruses of "O Rosenbaum, O Rosenbaum...
Every broker knew what the "peculiar circumstances" were: with 4,000,000 bu. of wheat, rye, corn and oats, Rosenbaum Grain Corp. had gone to the wall the previous afternoon. The scarcity of wheat caused by Drought had eaten into Manny Rosenbaum's warehouse business. Income from storing other people's wheat (1½? a month per bu.) had sunk out of sight; in its place was a heavy drain on cash for upkeep and taxes. And loans from banks were large. Rosenbaum Grain Corp. filed petitions in Delaware's and Chicago's Federal Courts...
When news of the failure flashed westward, both the Kansas City and St. Louis grain exchanges closed down. Wheat sank on the Winnipeg and Minneapolis exchanges, only major grain markets open in all of North America. Grain brokers from coast to coast held their breath in anticipation of a grand market smash...
Meanwhile great strides were made in mechanical wheat harvesting. Threshers, reapers, combines, tractors replaced the man with the scythe and profoundly changed the economy of the grain-growing West. But today the cotton crop is harvested exactly as it was when Eli Whitney invented his cotton gin-by Negroes moving between the rows of plants, plucking the fluffy bolls by hand and stuffing them into huge bags which the pickers drag behind them. An average picker bags about 100 Ib. of seed cotton a day, for which, if he is hired by a plantation owner, he may, in good times...
...orders. The price fell 10 to 20 points on each transaction. May contracts sank to 10.25?. Brokers snouted themselves hoarse as orders to sell poured in from the South, from Europe, from the Orient. Near-panic spread to the New Orleans Cotton Market, to the Stock Exchange, to the grain market in Chicago. When the Cotton Exchange's big bronze bell closed trading at 3 o'clock, cotton had suffered its worst break since 1927, with a maximum drop of 1.85? per lb. ($9.25 per bale). Next day it opened around...