By 9 a.m. the doorman guarding the gallery on the seventh floor of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange began turning visitors away. Inside, jampacked spectators looked down to the trading floor where traders were clustering, half an hour early, around the octagonal steps of the coarse-grains pit. Since September 1943 there had been ceilings on oats and barley and trading had all but died. Now a free market had returned.
In the "pulpit" stood Quotation Recorder Bill Poulden watching the clock. At 9:30, as the grain pits were opening in Chicago and Minneapolis, Poulden rang the gong and the pit burst...
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