THE FAMOUS BANK CASE 



Moreover, he had been paid $17 for the 

 dockage on his wheat, and in the old days 

 that would have been taken from him. 



He had still another reason to stand by that 

 bank and the whole program of the League, 

 which it had come to represent. On the same 

 day that the supreme court decision was pub- 

 lished appeared also certain reports of the 

 officer Doctor Ladd had appointed under the 

 new law to investigate the scales used by ele- 

 vators and grain firms that bought the farm- 

 ers' wheat, and some of these findings were 

 of a truly astounding nature. 



Doctor Ladd's investigator was D. J. 

 McGrath, an expert scales mechanician se- 

 cured in Minneapolis. He had nothing to do 

 with the farmers' fight; his business was to 

 test weighing-machines. In the first few days 

 he found and destroyed a wagon-load of false 

 scales and scale parts, and proved that the 

 charges of the farmers about underweighing, 

 which had been widely ridiculed or denounced 

 as preposterous, fell short of the truth. 



I will give one illustration. On every scale 

 beam there is a slight projection or nub that 

 prevents the weight from sliding beyond the 

 zero mark. Mr. McGrath found that this had 

 been filed off, so that the weight would slide 

 back of zero. Further investigation showed 

 that one of the weights used on this scale had 

 been plugged with lead. 



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