STATE GRANGE OF ILLINOIS. 93 

 / 



ci^me from? This is a very important question to answer. I shall not 

 attempt to answer it fully. But I shall ask your attention to the follow- 

 ing illustration, which is only used as an hypothesis, and may not be 

 strictly correct. I shall assume that an Illinois farmer, or a Western 

 farmer, produces annually an average crop of say one thousand bushels of 

 corn, five hundred bushels of wheat, five hundred bushels of oats, with 

 otlier vegetables and productions, sufficient to keep and feed his stock and 

 family, leaving these two thousand bushels of grain to be marketed. 

 Under your present system of selling it, it costs you about the following 

 sums, or rather it costs the producers and consumers this sum: The local 

 buyers usually take five cents per bushel on corn, as commission and ex- 

 pense of handling and shelling, while as a general thing, theexces? weight 

 between corn bought in the ear, and shelled corn, pays the cost of shelling 

 or very nearly, besides the cobs furnish good fuel. Your wheat must pay 

 at least three cents per bushel and your oats also three cents. Here at 

 home then is a local tax annuall}' imposed on you averaging four cents 

 per bushel or eighty dollars on the two thousand bushels of grain you have 

 for sale. If this grain goes to Chicago, it must be classified or graded, 

 and is then put into elevators, which charge two cents per bushel in Sum- 

 mer and four in "Winter as storage, which Eastern buyers are required to 

 pay, besides a commission of one cent. And I have no doubt but the local 

 shipper who ships to Chicago, also pays a commission of one cent, and 

 possibly elevator charges for storage are also charged to him, but grant- 

 ing they are not, and that your local shipper only pays one cent com- 

 mission, you then have an average of six cents per bushel in Winter, and 

 four cents per bushel in Summer, taken out of the producers and con- 

 sumers as toll, gathered by the Chicago toll gatherers. Toledo and other 

 cities are not all quite so bad, but in all a portion of the product of labor 

 is cut off. The average of Winter and Summer charges in Chicago would 

 be five cents per bushel or one hundred dollars on the amount of your 

 yearly product of grain. Next comes an Eastern bu3'er, who purchases to 

 sell to some smaller interior purchaser, who in turn sells to the real con- 

 sumer in his own native village or town. Each of these operations take, at 

 a very low estimate, two cents per bushel each, making four cents or eighty 

 dollars more to be added to the tax already taken from the producer and 

 consumer. You now have a total sum of (|260) two hundred and sixty 

 dollars tribute paid (between your producing farms in the West, and the 

 consuming villages in the East,) on the amount of your annual product of 

 two thousand bushels. 



If, through the course of this manipulating, this tax is equally divided, 

 you are paying one hundred and tliirty dollars annually for the present 

 condition of affairs. But this is not all, the Liverpool buyer next comes 

 to our shores, or to Canada, and he purchases your products in Chicago, 

 Milwaukee, Toledo, St. Louis, Boston or New York. In whatever place he 

 purchases he is charged a commission, then all the other little incidental 

 costs of shipping to Liverpool, amounting to two or three cents. The 



