LABOR'S WRONGS. 3! 



Minnesota, Wisconsin and Dakota raised 1,145,000,000 

 bushels of corn, and 339,000,000 bushels of wheat; or more 

 than three-fourths of the entire product of the United States. 

 All the surplus of this vast area must pass over the rail- 

 roads to find a market. The cost of transportation to the 

 East consumes one-half, and in some instances three-fourths 

 of the value of the grain products of the farm, and the 

 farmer's profits are made small in order that heavy freights 

 might be paid and large profits gained by the companies. 

 But an unjust tariff rate is not the only evil which the 

 railroad companies impose upon the farmer. They fre- 

 quently by iniquitous combination dictate the dealer to 

 whom he shall sell the products of his farm. 



Said an Iowa farmer recently : ' * The railroads of this 

 State discriminate unjustly against the farmers in the 

 transportation of crops ; that is, give other men advantages 

 which they deny to farmers. Let me explain: here is a 

 wheat or corn buyer who makes a living by purchasing 

 grain of the farmers and shipping it to Chicago. Of 

 course he makes a profit on it grows rich in fact. Now 

 the farmers think that if they ship their own grain di- 

 rectly to Chicago they might save the profit that this 

 middle-man makes. They engage a lot of cars, load them, 

 and send them forward, but they find when they have paid 

 the freight and the other expenses which the middle-man 

 must necessarily also incur, they don't have as much left 

 for their grain as he offered them. Now how is that ex- 

 plained? The railroad company gives the grain trader a 

 drawback on the grain he ships, which it refuses to the 

 farmers; and in some instances, at least, these traders are 

 in partnership with railway officials. I thought when the 

 idea of co-operative shipments was first proposed, that 

 these favors were given solely on account of the amount 

 of business that these men brought to the railroads. I 

 supposed that the deductions were simply those that would 



