Cooperation 125 



the local grain dealers and the line-elevator companies. 

 Twenty years ago, there were from one to ten local grain 

 buyers at each producing station. Some of the buyers 

 owned elevators ; others had no storage facilities and were 

 known as track buyers, who loaded the grain on the car 

 from the farmer's wagon. Competition was keen among 

 the buyers, and the farmer received a good price for his 

 grain, but hi the end the system of free competition proved 

 disastrous to many of the grain dealers. By 1900, the 

 grain dealers' associations that were formed to advance 

 the mutual interests of the members became the predomi- 

 nating factor in the grain business in the Central-western 

 states. They had driven out most of the smaller dealers ; 

 they coerced the commission merchants by refusing to 

 ship to any merchant who handled grain for an independ- 

 ent track buyer; they obtained the cooperation of the 

 railroads by securing a rule under which cars were re- 

 fused to a shipper unless the grain was on the right of way 

 of the railroad at the time the car was ordered. This 

 rule prevented the shipment of grain by the independent 

 track buyers and prevented the consignment of grain by 

 the farmer as well. With the independent buyers elimi- 

 nated, the grain dealers' associations in the principal 

 grain-growing states perfected their organization and 

 dictated the price to be paid to the farmers each week 

 by the dealers in their association. It is said that they 

 fixed the amount of grain each dealer could buy and 

 adopted a system of penalties which forced a dealer who 

 purchased more than his share to pay to the association 

 a fine varying from one cent a bushel on corn and oats 

 to ten cents a bushel on timothy. The association paid 



