World's Wrapper

In the rooms of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, Clive Street, Calcutta, meet the principal India jute associations. Last week the Calcutta jute men might well have discussed something else besides how much jute was arriving from the north, what price it was fetching on the Calcutta bazaar, how great were the exports of finished burlap from local mills. For Indian jute dealers were aware that last week in Manhattan had opened the New York Jute and Burlap Exchange, knew that 11/16 of the burlap exported from Calcutta goes to North America. Made from the fibrous stalk of a hemlock-like plant, jute has been for 100 years the prime material for gunny sacks, cordage and heavy wrappers. Trading on the new exchange will be conducted around posts for each of the commodities handled, which will include raw jute, burlap, hemp, sugar bags. President of the market is Rutger Bleeker, importer. To the Exchange Merchant Bleeker brings a knowledge of Eastern trade gained in 30 years of dealing in cocoa, jute, coffee, spices. In London the day the Exchange opened, he heard that 1,000,000 yards of burlap had changed hands during the first session at a price of about 6.10 cents per yard. Last year one Gladys Meryl Yule, 24, inherited a sum supposed to be about $100,000,000. She was forthwith publicized as "England's richest heiress." The $100,000,000 represented figurative or literal mountains of tea, rubber, coal, oil, banks, newspapers, steamships, flour mills, jute mills or coin of His Britannic Majesty's realm derived therefrom. This polygonal fortune had come to her from her father, old Sir David Yule, who had built it up from four mills which devolved upon him from his father-in-law, Andrew Yule, who first made Indian jute world-famed. It was the War's demand for sandbags which caused jute prices to soar and the Yule wealth to become fabulous. Much, however, of Miss Yule's $100,000,000 was in cash; for the jute part of the fortune had been acquired by J. P. Morgan & Co., now most potent factor in world jute.* To big companies the Exchange means no revolution in marketing methods. Burlap and jute will still be bought chiefly from the same sources, the difference being that there will be a guide to prices, previously a matter of private negotiations, that prices will tend to be stabilized, and merchants can hedge in futures.

*Other names respected by Manhattan jute men are Christopher Smiles & Co., importers of jute and burlap. Hanson & Orth, hemp dealers, Czarnikow Rionda Co., biggest U. S. sugar baggers, Ralli Bros. of London, handling 50% of raw jute imported to the U. S., said at the moment to lead Yule in total business.