page_title: Arthur W. Cutten
section_title: Speculation charges and death
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur W. Cutten / Speculation charges and death
caption_attribution_description: English: The base of the Cutten monument in Woodlawn Memorial Park in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The inscription for A. W. Cutten is at the top of the inscriptions.
context_page_description: Arthur William Cutten was a Canadian-born businessman who gained great wealth and prominence as a commodity speculator in the United States. He was called to appear before the Banking and Currency Committee in regard to the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He was under indictment for tax evasion upon his death in Chicago in 1936.
context_section_description: During the boom years of the 1920s, Cutten rose to national prominence as one of the United States' most important commodities and stock speculators. He acquired a home in Atlantic City, New Jersey and made himself an important player on Wall Street, where his success eclipsed even that of the renowned stock speculator Jesse Livermore, with whom he often battled as a bull vs. the often bearish short seller Livermore. In the crash of 1929, Livermore's fortune reached new heights, while Cutten's dwindled (but Livermore died broke several years later). In 1925, farm prices began a steady fall, from which they would not permanently recover for more than 15 years.  Nevertheless, at the time Arthur Cutten remained optimistic about the American economy and was featured in a cover story of the December 10, 1928 issue of Time in a profile as one of the leading market "Bulls" of the Big Bull Market of the 1920s.  However, less than a year later Cutten had lost more than $50 million as a result of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.  The ensuing investigation of the crash by the United States Senate's Pecora Commission brought a public outcry over rich speculators such as Cutten who had made huge amounts of money by forming trading pools to manipulate market prices.  New legislation was introduced to end market manipulation, and the U.S. government targeted certain of the high-profile speculators.
  Henry A. Wallace, the then United States Secretary of Agriculture charged Cutten with improper trading activities and tried to have him barred from trading on all futures exchanges in the United States. This ultimately went to the US Supreme Court in the case of Wallace v. Cutten, 298 U.S. 229 (1936)
  The government then went after him for income tax evasion. The tax suit would only be settled by the executors of his estate, because Arthur Cutten, his fortune vastly depleted by the stock market crash and the cost of lawyers to defend him from the government lawsuits, died in Chicago of a heart attack a few weeks short of his sixty-sixth birthday.  His body was brought back to his Canadian birthplace and interred in the family plot in Guelph's Woodlawn Cemetery.
caption: The base of Cutten's monument
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4000", "Image ImageLength": "2672", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FZ200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2016:03:07 15:01:21", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D2": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D3": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "720", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1398", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7129", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Landscape Mode", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:03:07 13:12:56", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:03:07 13:12:56", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "540241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "25/2", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2672", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1272", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "72", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}