141 



Once harvested he has to sell his harvest as <|iiickl\ 

 as he can, irrespective of what it fetches: not only be- 

 cause he has to pay off his indebtedness, 'out because 

 he lias nowhere to store the products till he can find 

 a better buyer. 



This j s, and always has been, for those who ad- 

 vance the funds, the creditor's great leverage, an op- 

 portunity which they are not slow to grasp. 



Here they have the farmer in a cleft stick, for he 

 cannot keep his grain without storing it properly and 

 where in the whole country are proper storing facili- 

 ties? 



The few cereal deposits of any real utility that 

 exist have long been in the hands of the grain brokers. 



As we see, whether the farmer belongs to the class 

 independent of loans for harvesting purposes, or to the 

 class' absolutely dependent on loans to raise its crops r 

 the situation is the same. 



The former may at great risk and expense store 

 what he has in hope of getting a few cents more, but 

 those who have made the experiment have come to real- 

 ise that it is only delaying the inevitable skinning pro- 

 cess; the latter has to sell will-nilly, and since 60 per 

 cent, of the farmers growing cereals constitute the lat- 

 ter class, more than half the grain is rushed to the 

 market immediately it is harvested. 



FARMERS PAID MORE ELSEWHERE. 



! 



If prices are not down in anticipation, they are not 

 long in coming down whatever the prospects may be 

 elsewhere . 



And yet we hear talk about Argentine farmers 

 fixing the world's sales as though the man who has to 

 sell is in the position to fix his own price. 



If any one doubts the existence of such state of af- 

 fairs, of the remarkable ease with which the farmer is 

 exploited, and of the facilities with which the leading- 

 grain buying houses combine into a trust, open or dis- 

 simulated, with the consequent power to fix the prices 

 current, then one fact alone should go a long way to 

 convince him. According to the statistics issued by 

 the Ministry of Agriculture, over a period of more than 

 15 years, dating back from before the war, the prices 

 on the wheat markets obtained by the former in the 

 U.S.A. for the same quality of wheat, have been be- 

 tween 10 and 15 per cent, more than those paid the Ar- 

 gentine farmer. 



