TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 435 



that you should ship to pay the burden. You pay the freight. More than 

 that, it means that at certain seasons of the year, the transportation 

 facilities aren't adequate even to meet your situation, and your corn and 

 your wheat and your cotton lie upon the platform to become the loser 

 because of weather-weights. 



Second: It puts a tremendous burden upon the financial ability of the 

 country to handle the situation. The banks all over the country in August 

 begin to husband their resources and their reserves to meet the crop- 

 moving season that begins in September and usually ends about the 

 first of Januaiy, for during the four months mentioned 75% of the 

 staple agricultural crops like cotton, corn, wheat and oats leave the 

 hands of the farmer and are marketed. 



Third: This system results in the annual Autumnal dip in the price 

 of farm products. If you should take the figures like I have done, you 

 can take a period of 25 years and go down the line, and with one single 

 exception — and I have never found out why that is an exception — you will 

 find that the prices of farm products during the four Fall months of the 

 year are the lowest, and that they are highest usually along in the early 

 spring and late winter. Who loses that? Somebody said the other day 

 that it was easier to climb a tree than it was to slide down a tree. Well, 

 now, that fellow never had lived in the country — I have. It is much 

 easier to slide down a greasy pole than it is to climb it, and if you don't 

 believe it try the experiment out one day. So that, when, on account 

 of your lack of system of marketing, the prices of your products are 

 artificially depressed during these four fall months, your struggle to get 

 them up the greasy pole is all the harder and you are the sufferers. You 

 cannot escape that, gentlemen! Yau connot escape that! 



And even if we reason that, my friends, you have this, as a fourth 

 proposition, — and I will illustrate it. If the farm women within a radius 

 of ten miles from Des Moines should all conclude to bring in their eggs 

 tomorrow — I shouldn't say tomorrow, I should say in July, because if 

 their hens aren't doing any better than mine they wouldn't bring in any. 

 (Laughter) And you know, this thing of my hens and yours going on a 

 strike has made me against all strikes, for I see what it can do to folks. 

 But if they bring their eggs in in July and offer them on the market, 

 and there is no other outlet for them than the market in Des Moines, I 

 venture to bet my bottom dollar that they would break the price of 

 eggs that day from ten to fifteen cents a dozen, and yet in four months of 

 the year we are asking the buying and absorbative power of the world to 

 take over 75% of the things they need over the period of twelve months. 

 What is the result? Your autumnal dip, again. All right, so much for 

 that! 



What is the trouble, my friends? In the study of any agricultural 

 problem .by any man who can reason, you always get to the point where 

 you say that the prime trouble is a lack of a system of marketing, and 

 when you get to that point and you begin to step out a little bit, you 

 always run up against the proposition that you cannot have a system of 

 orderly marketing unless you have some kind of a different system of 

 financing the farmer. (Applause) So there you come to the vital thing 



