23 



millions annually invested in sacks is a dead loss, 

 which by the construction and use of elevators could be 

 avoided altogether, so that in reality the waste of money 

 in sacks would be superior to $100,000,000. 



That the additional charges we would have to pay 

 for not being in a position to load rapidly and despatch 

 the few ships we would get, would add to our losses, would 

 mean still further reduced prices for our wheat; that 

 absence of facilities for rapid loading such as elevators 

 offer would impede us from receiving more ships, or 

 <even being in a position to solicit them, incidentally de- 

 laying our shipments of cereals and so bringing in its 

 train greater damages to our trade; that the difference 

 in rapid despatch money alone per annum which we 

 could earn, would in the abnormal years of the war ex- 

 ceed millions, that the difference between this and the 

 cost of demurrage would leave us out of pocket by mil- 

 lions, instead of in pocket . 



I estimated these losses at some $5,000,000, but as a 

 tmatter of fact the total overcharge annually, and the dif- 

 ference between the freights, even allowing for the favour- 

 able circumstances of the Argentine Republic lying out 

 side the war zone, and that loading was speeded up as 

 anuch as possible, which we have had to pay and those at 

 which we could have obtained ships have exceeded this 

 figure by nearly twenty times. 



And finally that the gains to commercial grain buy- 

 ing houses and acopiadores, to the speculators on the 

 drain markets, aided by the manipulations and extortion- 

 ate price-lowering combinations of the Grain monopoly 

 or Trust which rules the market, over and above the legi- 

 timate return they are entitled to from their business, 

 would equal one quarter of the value of the crop; that 

 by their being able to buy cheaply from the farmer, 

 and force him to sell at their own terms, no matter what 

 the real values ruling were, they would gain $100,000,000. 



As a matter of fact their profits have far exceeded 

 this sum. It is sufficient to quote the prices ruling in the 

 country at present for our wheat ($6 per fanega against 

 the official price of $12.50 per 100 kilos). The outcry is 

 long and loud to-day, the same as it was when I wrote 

 in 1914, predicting that it would be even worse later on. 



In this respect let me extract from the brochure 

 published in 1908 under the pseudonym of Cornucopia, 

 -which seems to me to reflect the same conditions unchang- 

 ed, and which curiously records an attempt to draw at 

 tention to a situation analogous to that of 1914 and again 

 remarkable in 1919; that is the exploitation which the 

 farmer has to submit to on the part of those who deal in 



