98 



demand for sacks creates is something which seems well 

 nigh impossible, yet somehow or the other each succes- 

 sive year seems to find a new worry. 



This year it has been discovered that the business 

 is very bad for the farmer, for he pays one peso for . a 

 sack and then sells it later for scarcely over five cents. 

 He buys his sacks by number and sells them by 

 weight: the " acopiador " who undertakes to provide the 

 sacks, charges the farmer one peso per sack, then he fills 

 the sack with grain and buys the sack full 6f grain from 

 the farmer paying whatever the price ruling for 

 grain for both grain and sack, so that, for 

 example if the cack weighs 10 oz. new at 

 47 in. say half a kilo or one Ib. and the price of 

 the grain is $12.50 the hundred kilos, the farmer gets 

 back six and a quarter cents, for what he has just paid 

 one peso for. Then when the "acopiador" has despatch- 

 ed the grain to the nearest port elevator for shipment, 

 which is made in bulk (granel) in fifty per cent, of the 

 cases and receives the same sack back, if it is not at all 

 damaged he can again repeat the operation with the 

 next farmer, and so on ad-infinitum, occasionally vary- 

 ing the charge for the sack as it becomes definitely se- 

 cond-hand. Of course the farmer rarely gets the $12.50 

 so as a matter of fact he does not even get anything like 

 five cents for the sack back again. 



I leave it to the imagination to calculate what this 

 brilliant system of trading costs the farmer annually, on 

 the 300 million sacks he insists on using. Of what use 

 is it to denounce the additional profits which those who 

 advance sacks consider themselves entitled to? It has al- 

 ways been -the custom (and only the tremendous rise in 

 prices of sacks has brought the matter into prominence' 

 of those who advance bags to require of the farmer as a 

 preliminary condition the sale of his produce. 



Unless we are disposed to provide some practical 

 way out of the loss such as by erecting elevators at the 

 railway stations, establishing the sale of wheat in bulk 

 and permitting half a dozen crops being harvested with 

 the same bags, we can discern no remedy for the farmer. 

 Even if he pays cash for them and only 25 cents for his 

 bags as in the past the loss is just the same, except that 

 the volume is reduced. There is no possible way of pro- 

 viding for the rapid return of the bags from the present 

 port elevators, except it adds to the cost of the sacks in 

 the way of return freights, etc., and then under the pre- 

 sent system of grain transport and sale, once the farmer 

 has disposed of his crop he has no interest in having the 



