By Ronald Ahrens

As mentioned in the previous post, Kristen was in Buffalo the other day and took photos of the terminal elevators. Today’s post is the second in a series of three we’re doing with our own commentary as well as some lines from Cargill: Trading the World’s Grain, by Wayne G. Broehl, Jr. These lines show how central Buffalo was to the grain trade.

“It’s the face of Gold Medal flour,” Kristen said.

“It’s a winking face,” I said.

* * *

“The Farm Board created further consternation by its avowed aim to hold its March wheat contracts until the contract terminated, then take actual grain. Thus, physical grain had to be delivered to Chicago by the shorts to fulfill these contracts. Most of these short contracts were held by private-sector grain traders, but a substantial amount of their physical stock of grain already had been moved forward in the pipeline to eastern terminals. Cargill, its Midwest storage already glutted, had shipped large amounts of grain through the Lakes to the Buffalo and Ogdensburg, New York terminals, paying transportation costs to get it there. If this eastern grain had to be used to fulfill the short contracts, either by physical movement back to Chicago or some compensating trade, the grain traders wanted to recover the transportation costs they had already expended on it. The Farm Board refused to allow this … John [MacMillan] Sr., outraged, fired off missives to everyone in Washington about the Farm Board ‘squeeze.'” — p. 349

“You can smell the cereal from across the canal,” Kristen said.

“If only it were a scratch-and-sniff photo,” I said.

* * *

“In June 1930, Cecil C. Boden from the Omaha office was assigned to a newly opened Cargill branch in Rotterdam, Holland. John [MacMillan] Jr. told him: ‘While ultimately we expect to have you doing a very large business for us … we wish caution to be the keynote.’ He also reiterated the long-standing company credo relating to ethical conduct: ‘We wish particularly to stress the fact that our future success abroad will depend entirely on our standing in the trade. The motto of our Buffalo office ‘We deliver what we sell’ is an excellent one to remember.'”