98 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



four months and sold it for $1.04 a bushel, 20 cents 

 more than my tenant received. 



But this is not the most striking illustration of bad 

 management on the part of the farmer in handling his 

 markets. Not only do they sell their wheat, but they 

 sell it all, and before the next harvest begins they are 

 buying flour. I have repeatedly seen packages of flour 

 in the village having come as far as from Minnesota. 

 The miller at Bluemont tells me that in the spring he 

 orders wheat from the Northwest to grind to fill the 

 local demand. Thus, in the autumn almost all the 

 wheat in the country is shipped out, and in the spring 

 the necessary supplies for the farmers' uses are shipped 

 back. This catches the farmer coming and catches him 

 going. 



THE FINAL EESULT. 



The obvious conclusion from this brief statement of 

 the fundamentally wrong conditions of the market is 

 that in all matters controlled by trusts the farmer has 

 no show at all. For instance, the meat markets of this 

 country are in the hands of a few individuals and the 

 farmer sells his meat at a forced low price. On the 

 other hand, the wheat markets of the country are too 

 large to be controlled by a trust, and the farmer gets a 

 fair market price for his wheat. 



It would hardly be fair to go into these details with- 

 out some suggestion of a constructive nature. The 

 most obvious fact, as I see it, is that the farmer will 

 never come into his full rights in the market until he is 

 thoroughly organized. I say this with a full knowledge 

 of the financial shipwrecks which usually attend any 

 ventures at cooperation, and yet successful cooperation 

 is the only way to meet successful organization. 



