THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



transactions. They knew, for instance, that 

 four and a quarter bushels of wheat make 

 a barrel of flour and that at the current 

 prices for the by-products of those four and 

 a quarter bushels such by-products paid mill- 

 ing cost and left the flour almost clear profit 

 to the miller. Here was "velvet chaff" 

 indeed, well worth having! They had also 

 a general notion at least that these gigantic 

 profits were taken up and concealed by 

 huge over-capitalizations and that what ap- 

 peared to be a modest profit of 7 per cent, 

 on the capital stock was in reality often 

 28 per cent, or more on the money actually 

 invested. There were even farmers in the 

 Northwest that knew as well as any professor 

 in any chair of political economy (as well or 

 better) what were the relations of this system 

 to the cost of living. They were also familiar 

 with such instances as this, which I take from 

 the investigations of John Kenneth Turner: 



On January 1.5, 1916, at Minot, North Dakota, flour 

 was selling for $7 a barrel. Dividing ^/\ into 7, we 

 have $1.64% as the milling value of the wheat, of which 

 that flour was made. But take No. 1 Northern, the 

 highest grade of wheat offered at Minot. Did the 

 farmer get $1.64% for his No. 1 Northern? He did 

 not. The highest priee the mill at Minot would pay 

 for such wheat was the price paid at the local elevator, 



this ;ire added the other practices outlined in these records, of which 

 they ;ire the victims the total becomes overwhelming and explains 

 all the farmers' difficulties in this fertile and highly blessed land. 



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