WHEAT 87 



The local dealer often gives too little considera- 

 tion to the actual quality of wheat in fixing the 

 local market price. He learns about what the 

 general run of the wheat bought at his elevator 

 will grade, and he then pays about the same price 

 to each farmer, even though the wheat may 

 actually vary considerably in quality and grade. 

 The writer has stood at a grain elevator in a 

 western Kansas town and observed the delivery of 

 wheat which in his judgment should have been 

 given three different grades, yet the grain was 

 all graded No. 2 and sold at the same price. This 

 is not only unfair to the farmer selling the better 

 grade of wheat but it encourages carelessness and 

 neglect on the part of the producers in keeping 

 their grain pure and of high quality. The grain 

 dealer should make it to the advantage of the 

 farmer to sell a pure type of wheat of high grade 

 by paying a higher price for such grain, and he 

 should advertise the fact. 



CO-OPERATION THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 



The establishment of co-operative grain ele- 

 vators by the farmers has progressed rapidly in 

 the last ten years, and is having a salutary effect 

 in maintaining more uniform prices to the pro- 

 ducers, but such co-operation considers one side 

 of the problem only the producer's side. It takes 

 no account of the handling and distribution of the 

 grain and its manufacture into food products and 

 their ultimate purchase and use by the consumer. 

 In recent years the very high cost of living is 

 calling attention to the fact that our methods of 



