SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III. 65 



For twenty years it was being demonstrated that such institutions 

 coukl be made profitable, and the testimony of all farmers connected with 

 the co-operative plan of handling grain is that it has been the means of 

 increasing the price of grain to the producer from 2 to 5 cents per bushel 

 and still allow a margin of profit sufficient to pay the running expenses of 

 the business. 



Let us be conservative and place the figure at the lowest estimate, and 

 then see what the result will be. Place Iowa's corn crop at 350,000,000 

 for this year, allow one-half of this for feeding, place a farm value of 30 

 cents on this 175, COO, 000 of corn, and the elevator tax at the country end 

 would reach the proportions of $3,500,000; add to this the tax on other 

 grains of an equal amount, and you have the enormous sum of $7,000,000 

 which might be saved to develop Iowa's resources by co-operative handling. 



And yet, with each succeeding year of co-operative practice, new and 

 greater possibilities appear. 



In order to call to your attention some oi the evils of the warehousing 

 system, which comes as a result of the alliance between the railroads and 

 the elevator interests, I shall trespass on your time long enough to read 

 you some extracts from an address made by William T. Baker, who was 

 president of the Chicago Board of Trade for five years, a man too honest 

 to be useful to the elevator interests, and fearless in his denunciation of 

 their methods: 



EXTRACTS FROM PRESIDENT BAKER'S ADDRESS, JANUARY, 1895. 



"Next to the incubus of the bucket shops is the tyranny of the elevator 

 monopoly, which, from a fair and legitimate beginning, has grown to such 

 proportions within your association as to threaten its very existence. And 

 it is a broader question than the survival of the fittest among groups of 

 business men and interests in this exchange. It concerns every merchant 

 and every common carrier engaged in the great commerce of this city, and 

 every farmer who contributes to make that commerce possible. The ware- 

 housing of grain is only an incident in its transit from producer to con- 

 sumer. Its natural and healthy function is in accepting on storage the 

 overflow of the season of freest movement that the channels of commerce 

 may not be clogged or obstructed, and safely caring for the same while 

 waiting a demand. But in Chicago the accumulation and storage of grain 

 has come to be the chief end and aim of potential and dominating forces. 

 The alliance between railroads and elevators has resulted in reaching out 

 after millions of bushels not naturally tributary to us, and when gath- 

 ered here preventing it by such tricks of trade as you are familiar with 

 from ever getting away again as long as storage can be collected on it. 

 This policy has resulted in such congestion of grain here as to depress 

 prices to the lowest point in history. For it is not the Chicago stock alone 

 that this market has to carry. Its very volume invites dealers in every 

 market in the world to make sales here against holdings elsewhere, which 

 they would not dare to do but for abnormal accumulations brought and 

 held here by unnatural means. Cargoes of wheat bought on European 

 account in Austxalia, India, Russia and Argentina, as well as stocks at all 

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