ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 63 



the home price. That last plan is what the manufacturers 

 do with their surplus goods that the home people cannot 

 buy at their inflated prices. 



Because speculators and gamblers put the price of wheat 

 up to $3.40 a bushel last May, when they, had gotten it out 

 t)f the farmers hands at from $1.00 to $1.50 a bushel the fall 

 before, the government punished the wheat raisers by pricing 

 their two following crops unreasonably low for war and 

 famine conditions. 



Because warehouses, packing houses, jobbers, wholesalers, 

 commission men, union labor and retailers, take such ex- 

 orbitant tolls out of farm products, the price to the farmers 

 is forced down to the lowest possible point to make it pos- 

 sible for consumers to buy them. This is often less than 

 one-half to one-fourth what they should have to cover 

 skilled labor wages and overhead expenses. 



Producers of all farm products should unionize and set 

 minimum prices on them that would cover those two classes 

 of cost. They should take theirs out first, as they are en- 

 titled to do, and then let other classes fight it out among 

 themselves and with the public for theirs. 



What do you think of that plan, Mr. Farmer? That is 

 the minimum price plan. I am sure you would like to get 

 the good wages union labor is getting and all the overhead 

 expenses it costs you to produce your products. You can 

 have both by unionizing to inaugurate and follow that plan 

 in selling your products. Will it pay to unionize for that? 

 It is up to you to decide. 



Cost of Raising Wheat in Argentina. 



A copy of a letter from our consul at Rosario, Argentina, 

 Mr. Wilbert L. Bonrey, dated October 29, 1917, was mailed 

 to me February 23, 1918, by the Department of Agriculture, 

 Washington, D. C., on my request for statistics on cost of 

 wheat production in this and foreign countries. It is an in- 

 teresting view of our far off competitors in wheat raising, and 

 I give it in full : 



