In 1953, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange hired Harris for the position of President and doubled the $10,000 salary he was paid by the Board of Trade. While serving as president, Harris was the most public representative of the exchange. He served as president until retiring on his 65th birthday in 1978. In 1955 two onion traders, Sam Seigel and
Vincent Kosuga cornered the onion futures market and then drove onion prices in order to profit from a
short positions that they held. The collapse of onion prices drove many onion farmers into bankruptcy. A public outcry ensued among onion farmers who were left with large amounts of worthless inventory. As the public face of the exchange, Harris lobbied hard against the bill. He described the proposed ban as "Burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the
Onion Futures Act in August 1958. Harris celebrated the beginning of live cattle trading by parading an
Angus calf around the trading floor. Cattle trading later became one of the mainstay products of the exchange. The Chicago Board of Trade later began offering live cattle trading to compete with the Mercantile Exchange. Harris accused the Board of Trade of "violating an unwritten law of commodity trading" by offering the same product that was launched by a neighboring exchange. Though Harris circulated a public petition which demanded the Board of Trade cease copying the Mercantile Exchange, the Board of Trade continued trading in live cattle futures. Harris and Melamed later met with then-
United States Secretary of the Treasury George P. Shultz, who also approved of their plan. In 1972, they began trading currency on the exchange and it was a very successful market. The currency trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange eventually served as a model for many other currency trading markets. ==References==