Commodity Compromise

The Chicago Board of Trade is one of the nation's last untamed financial frontiers, where fortunes are often won and lost in a week of frenzied commodities dealing. Last week the board got a new president, quiet, methodical Warren W. Lebeck, 52, an officer of the C.B.T. for the past 19 years. Lebeck was picked by the board of directors after a divisive five-month manhunt. He is a compromise candidate, who lacks the charisma and political clout of his $110,000-a-year predecessor, Henry Hall Wilson, a well-connected Democrat who returned home to North Carolina last June to challenge Sam Ervin for his Senate seat in 1974. But Lebeck may be the perfect man for the job.

The administrative expertise that he has gained over the past eight years as day-to-day operating chief will be an asset to the C.B.T., whose dollar volume of trading in wheat, soybeans, corn and other commodities has increased 176% since 1972, when it exceeded that of the New York Stock Exchange. His reputation as an unflinching guardian of the rules governing the complicated wheeling and dealing in his business may temper the thrust of some recent Congressional developments. The House Agricultural Committee is beginning to investigate whether excessive speculation in commodities markets has inflated food prices; and Senators Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern have introduced bills calling for the creation of an independent Commodities Exchange Commission to oversee the trading of futures contracts in much the same way that the Securities & Exchange Commission keeps its eye on the sale of stocks and bonds.

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