STORY OF THE "FEED WHEATS" 



This final demonstration leaves the sub- 

 ject perfectly clear. The reason why, when 

 the average cost of raising a bushel of wheat 

 in North Dakota was seventy-five cents, the 

 average price the farmer received for it was 

 seventy-three cents, is now as plain as day. 

 We can see why, with some of the richest soil 

 on earth, farming in North Dakota was an 

 unprofitable business; why there were so 

 many abandoned farms; why the tide of 

 broken-spirited men returning by the trail 

 of Disappointment, beaten from that uneven 

 contest, sometimes equaled that other tide 

 that flowed into it by the highway of Promise; 

 why so much of the world's granary was only 

 a desert waste; why the foreclosure notices 

 crowded the newspapers with their melan- 

 choly tales of disaster; why the region that 

 should have been, of all the world, one of the 

 best for farming was one of the worst; why 

 those that remained to face the struggle 

 plodded on without hope or a fair chance in 

 the fight. 



I have here before me a summary of these 

 conditions as they actually were. A farmer 

 prepared it, and for all the bitterness in it 

 he found logical and undeniable basis in 

 facts. He wrote: 



