STORY OF THE "FEED WHEATS" 



of the value of these departments, which 

 were always, at the public expense, devising 

 and inventing improvements that the Minne- 

 apolis combination promptly and easily ab- 

 sorbed for its own greater emoluments. 



And I may here remark that while the effort to 

 represent the farmer as dull like the clods in his 

 field is of great antiquity and much celebrated 

 in some forms of literature, the fact is we shall 

 have to abandon that comfortable superstition 

 now. It was not upon unsuspecting yokels that 

 these iniquities were practised, but upon men 

 alert, keen-witted, full of reading, experienced. 



In March, 1914, a South Dakota farmer 

 testified before the Rules Committee of the 

 national House of Representatives that in 

 the previous fall he had sold his wheat at 

 his local elevator at sixty-nine cents a bushel 

 on the solemn representations of the elevator 

 man that this was the actual market. He 

 went home with his newspaper under his arm, 

 studied the Liverpool market reports, figured 

 accurately the cost of handling, transporta- 

 tion, commissions, and the rest, and proved 

 that he had been defrauded of seven cents 

 a bushel. 1 Similarly, the bulk of the farmers 

 knew perfectly well the nature of all these 



1 We produce annually in this country about 5,000,000,000 bushels 

 of grain. Suppose the manipulators to take in this manner but one 

 cent a bushel, that would be $50,000,000. Suppose the experience 

 of the South Dakota farmer to be average, that would be $350,000.000 

 a year taken from the farmers by this process alone, and when to 



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