Background
Hutchinson was born in Middleton, Massachussets, the son of Ira and Hannah (Wilson) Hutchinson. He was descended from Richard Hutchinson, of Arnold, England, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.
Businessman packer speculator trader
Hutchinson was born in Middleton, Massachussets, the son of Ira and Hannah (Wilson) Hutchinson. He was descended from Richard Hutchinson, of Arnold, England, who settled 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. For a time he lived in Boston, then he decided to go west. Arriving in Milwaukee in 1856, he went to work in Plankinton'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 enlarged 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 in provisions and in corn, without any of the spectacular features which marked his later trading in grain. His interest in pure speculation 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 provisions within a range of prices and over the period 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 "corners" and "Old Hutch, " as he was now familiarly 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 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 futures and cash wheat in July, and aided by unusual frost damage during September, he ran wheat up from 871/2 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 engaged 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 speculators of his type, found his early fortune greatly 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 he 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.
While in Lynn, in 1853, he was married to Sarah M. Ingalls of that city.