There (on the exchange floor), 50 or 60 grown men stood leaning in each other's faces shouting as loudly as they could in primordial tones of voice that I had never heard before, except may be one time I tried to take a shrimp away from my cat. Veins bulged in the men's necks. Their eyes seemed ready to leap from their sockets at any moment. They waved their arms threateningly at one another in some incomprehensible code. It was like a cockfight without the cocks. A crowd this angry couldn't help but come to blows at any moment... My heart was in my throat. What was going on here? The men were trading cotton.