I3 2 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



While the Equity Society was entrenching itself in Wisconsin, the 

 spring wheat growers were beginning to organize under its leadership in 

 Minnesota, the Dakotas, and then in Montana. This was accomplished 

 mainly through the Equity Cooperative Exchange, the first cooperative 

 terminal marketing agency of importance in the United States. Later, a 

 livestock-marketing firm was added. Generally speaking, the organizers 

 of the exchange operated on the theory that local cooperative marketing 

 reform, desirable as it was, did not and could not provide relief from the 

 abuses that existed on the terminal market. 49 



The grievances of the spring wheat growers against the grain merchants 

 were of long standing, and when Equity projected itself into the struggle 

 it simply followed in the footsteps of the Grangers, the Alliancemen, the 

 Populists, and other promoters of the cooperative grain-marketing move- 

 ment. In graphic style Equity leaders denounced the grain merchants for 

 depressing prices, underweighing, undergrading, and heavily assessing the 

 farmers for foreign material in their grain. The mixing of lower-grade 

 wheat with that of a higher grade and selling the mixed wheat as the 

 higher grade was termed a fraud. The railroads, the bankers, and the 

 Minnesota State Grading and Inspection Board were considered enemies 

 of the farmers. 50 The railroads were charged with both denying cars when 

 needed and exacting heavy tolls when the cars were furnished. The 

 bankers and other agencies financing the movement of grain were 

 "usurers." The Minnesota State Grading and Inspection Board was assailed 

 as the tool of "speculators," "grain gamblers," "vultures," "pilferers," 

 "bandits," "pirates," "thieves," "crooks," and "the Grain Combine." All 

 this, when reduced to the smallest common denominator, became the 



stoc\ (Washington, 1931), pp. 12-16; B. H. Hibbard and Asher Hobson, "Coopera- 

 tion in Wisconsin," University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Bul- 

 letin 282 (Madison, 1917), p. 17; Equity News, May i, 1917, p. 10. 



49. For a statement by the head of the Equity Cooperative Exchange explaining 

 why farmers had taken to the terminal market, see the Equity Farm News (Fargo, 

 N. Dak.), January i, 1912, p. 13. 



50. L. D. H. Weld, "Cooperation in Minnesota," Papers and Proceedings of the 

 Seventh Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Academy of the Social Sciences (Minne- 

 apolis, 1914), VII, 57-58; Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the Grain 

 Trade (7 vols., Washington, 1920-1926), III, 154-61 [see page 161 for the arguments 

 of the grain trade]; Minnesota Leader (Olivia), December 17, 31, 1921. 



