Dear Mr. President,

Almost 100 years ago President Calvin Coolidge said, “The business of (the United States of) America is business.” The first business from before our nation’s founding that drove its development and rapid expansion was the cotton business. Cotton was the commodity that created international trade from the eighth century onward. To understand the cotton business and many origins of issues we still struggle with today, including race relations, I recommend you read the book “Empire of Cotton” by Sven Beckert.

John Walls is an executive with ADM Investor Services, but he started in the industry like many others of his generation as a trading floor messenger or runner. As a runner on the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange trading floor working for Shatkin Trading, Walls took advantage of nearly every opportunity he was presented with to learn all the different aspects of the markets and futures industry.