Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-08-02
Furnishing THE FARMERS.

According to dispatch from James
town, North Dakota, the elevators in
that State will not store grain this year,
The dispatch goes on to say:
"This radical change in the handling
of the crops has been kept as secret as
possible. 1t was determined upon soon
after the law was passed this year.
which makes all public elevators and
warehouses pay an annual license of
$3.50 per 1000 bushels capacity. Nine
tenths of the crop of the State has been
heretofore bought by the elevator COM
panies upon the Duluth and Minneapolis
quotations. A farmer could store his
grain in these elevators for Is days for
nothing, and keep it in store as long as
he desired to pay small fee therefor
Now the elevators will refuse this on
the ground that they are not public ele-
vators, and the farmer, who is mort
gagged to the ears, will be compelled to
sell his crop at whatever price the COM
pany chooses to allow him. In most
cases this will leave him penniless for
the winter. The law was supposed to
be "a reasonable one and was in the
nature of tax not SO easy to evade as
the old tax law has proved; but the
companies, in order to eyade it, will
resort to this sweeping change, which
will bring misery on most of the wheat
growers of this State-a class of men
having from so to 500 acres in grain,
which represents all they have in the
world, and which now promises the
first actual return for their labor in
three years. By the plan of forcing
private buyers out of the small stations
and agreeing upon price the principal
elevators of the State will have, as in
the past, absolute control of the enor-
nous crop now heading out. This crop
will be so large that the railroad COM
missioners have stated that all the rail-
roads combined cannot furnish cars to
move it one tenth as fast as required.
| If the elevators decline to store it the
confusion and dismay that will result
will be something unparalleled. OF
course the demand for cars will be inn
mensely increased. Farmers having
had no notice Of the elevators action,
will not have time to build bins or ware
houses. They have, as rule, no gran
aries now and cannot get money to buy
lumber for new ones to store their own
grain in. Many of them bought seed
wheat of the elevator syndicate organ
lied by Governor Miller this spring.
This wheat was charged for at 81 a
bushel and hen taken on the crop,
which prevents the farmer from doing
anything with it except selling it to the
company as soon as it is threshed. The
plan of the combine will result in an
agricultural panic for this section of the
State"
How helpless are the people who are
raised in the individualistc SCHOOL,
Here is new State, full of wealth
which the labor alone of its citizens
brings up to the surface, and still under
the absolute political control of that
labor, Its credit is good for any num-
Der of Millions yet its agricultural in
terests are at the mercy of few pluto.
Gratis, who have built some grain eleva-
tors and whose aggregate wealth cannot
compare with the value of one year S
product of the grain fields of North
Dakota. And it does not for a moment
occur to the farmers of that State that
they also, through their State govern
ment, could build elevators and thereby
free themselves from the impudent
dominion of few rascals, intent upon
their ruin and enslavement.