Hutchinson

1643 sne an^ all but one of her household were
massacred by the Indians. Of her children, Ed-
ward was the great-grandfather of Thomas
Hutchinson [#.z>.]. Her daughter Faith was the
wife of Thomas Savage, commander-in-chief of
the Massachusetts forces during King Philip's
War. Her youngest daughter, Susanna, born in
1633, was carried away by the Indians at the
time of the massacre but was ransomed by the
Dutch and in 1651 she was married to John Cole
of Boston.

[There is a biography of Anne Hutchinson, with
bibliography, in the Diet, of Nat. Biog. See also Winni-
fred King Rugg, Unafraid: A Life of Anne Hutchin-
son (1930); R. P. Bolton, A Woman Misunderstood:
Anne, Wife of Wm. Hutchinson (1931); Edith Curtis,
Anne Hutchinson (1930) ; Helen Augur, An Am. Jese-
bel: The Life of Anne Hutchinson (1930) ; J. L. Ches-
ter, "The Hutchinson Family of England and New
England, and Its Connection with the Marburys and
Drydens," New-Eng. Hist, and GeneaL Reg., Oct.
1866; C. F. Adams, Three Episodes of Mass. Hist.
(1892), and Antinomianism in the Colony of Mass. Bay
(1894); J. K. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop's Journal (2
vols., 1908) ; G. E. Ellis, The Puritan Age and Rule
(1888), and J. T. Adams, The Founding of New Eng-
land (1921).] J.T.A.

HUTCHINSON, BENJAMIN PETERS

(July 24, i829-Mar, 16, 1899), Chicago packer,
grain trader, and speculator, was born in Mid-
dleton, Mass., the son of Ira and Hannah (Wil-
son) Hutchinson. He was descended from Rich-
ard Hutchinson, of Arnold, England, who set-
tled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.
Before he was twenty-one he went to Lynn to
enter the shoe business. In this he failed, but
while in Lynn, in 1853, he was married to Sarah
M. Ingalls of that city. For a time he lived in
Boston, then he decided to go west. Arriving in
Milwaukee in 1856, he went to work in Plankin-
ton's meat-packing plant. Two years later he
moved to Chicago where he began to pack meats
in a small way on his own account. The Civil
War stimulated the demand for pork and he en-
larged his operations, entering the firm of Burt,
Hutchinson & Snow. This was the first firm
to move to the Union Stock Yards when they
were opened in 1866. The firm later dissolved
and in 1872 the Chicago Packing & Provision
Company was organized by Hutchinson and S.
A. Kent. This company operated successfully
until 1885. It was said,of Hutchinson that "he
inaugurated the system which now saves and
turns into money everything then termed waste
by the packers."

He had become a member of the Chicago
Board of Trade soon after his arrival in the city
and in 1870 had organized the Corn Exchange
Bank to make loans to members of the Board
dealing in grain and provisions. Up to this time
his speculative trading on the Board was mainly

Hutchinson

in provisions and in corn, without any of the
spectacular features which marked his later
trading in grain. His interest in pure specula-
tion dates from 1876 when he took the lead in
organizing the "call market" for dealing in "puts
and calls." This method of dealing consists in
the sale by one operator to another of the option
of buying from or selling to the person giving
the option a future contract in grain or provi-
sions within a range of prices and over the pe-
riod intervening between the close and opening
of the market. In this doubly hazardous form
of speculative trading Hutchinson excelled and
he dominated the call market from 1880 until it
was temporarily abolished by the Board in 1884.
From 1887 to 1890 he was the most powerful
single trader on the Board of Trade. This was
a period of repeated corners and attempted "cor-
ners" and "Old Hutch," as he was now familiar-
ly called, was matching wits with traders such
as Armour, Cudahy, Ream, and Pardridge. His
great coup came in 1888, the year in which his
son Charles L. Hutchinson [g.z>.] was president
of the Board, when he cornered September
wheat.

Although he was sixty years old and had just
suffered a bad fall, he directed buying operations
from his bed. He began buying September fu-
tures and cash wheat in July, and aided by un-
usual frost damage during September, he ran
wheat up from 87^ cents in August to $1.50 on
September 28. When the "shorts" refused to
settle at this price, he put the price up to $2.00
and held it there. He was implacable with those
who had tried to crush him, but so great was he
in the market, says the historian of the Board,
that "whenever the old gentleman became en-
gaged in conversation with any one, business in
the pit stopped." From this time on he engaged
in a frenzy of speculation. The partnership
which he had formed with his son Charles in
the commission business in 1875 was dissolved
and he gave all his time to trading. In the fall
of 1889 he dominated the markets for wheat and
corn as well as pork. He suffered heavy losses
in the financial panic brought on by the failure
of Baring Brothers in 1890 and, like other spec-
ulators of his type, found his early fortune great-
ly diminished. Early in 1891 he disappeared
from the floor of the exchange and was next
heard from in New York, where he carried on
some sporadic trading. In 1893 ^e withdrew
from active membership on the Chicago Board
of Trade. His business career was ended and
he died in 1899 after a period of failing health.
He was a born trader with all the shrewdness
but with none of the conservatism of his New

437