Prescription for Rye?

Last week the business conduct committee of the Chicago Board of Trade sent a questionnaire to brokers, asking for lists of all open accounts in rye of over 100,000 bu. Reason: suspicion of an attempted corner in rye. Grainmen scouted the idea of even a technical corner, but none of them denied that a major operation in the rye market had by last week boosted the price of that grain from 48-c- to over 61-c-.

The operator who stirred up the Board of Trade was that most scorned of all speculators, a doctor. Edward A. Crawford, M. D., graduated in 1911 from the medical school of Valparaiso University, is not, however, a consulting room speculator. Some years ago he practiced medicine in Jacksonville, Fla., then moved to New Orleans, gave up writing prescriptions and began writing market orders. In 1919 with a small stake, said to have been $800 made on the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, he shifted the scene of his unmedical operations to Manhattan.

Five feet three inches high, weighing nearly 125 lb., a man who dislikes tobacco, is indifferent to good clothes and almost as indifferent to statistics, he is a trader with a cold eye for a market profit. Totally lacking in the flush speculator's flair for spending but showing a magnificent willingness to take risks, he has been long and short on a big scale in most commodities, many stocks. He engages extensively in the very risky business of writing puts and calls. He made a fortune (reputedly $2,000,000) in the post-War boom, was cleaned out in 1921. Since then he has been credited with several killings, debited with severe beatings. Last year he attracted notice with several big and profitable deals in cotton. Congress, prying into short sales, found him to have been short at one time 16,800 shares of Auburn Automobile Co. at the right time. Last March he invaded sugar, supposedly rode up with it from .7-c- to 1.25-c-, cleared $2,000,000.

He is reported to have bought and taken delivery in May on 4,000,000 bu. of rye, now stored in warehouses--about half of the visible supply in the U. S. If he tries to get a corner grainmen prophesy that he will take a beating; conversely, talk of a corner may contribute to his profits. Last week he maintained his usual canny silence, for the time being in Florida which possesses not only good telephone connections with Chicago but also real estate well suited to his talents.

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