The Madison journal. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1888-current, 1913-10-11
SMALL PART OF THE PROFIT
Real Cleaners of Boosted Agricultural
Wealth Of Country Are Men
Who Manipulate Markets.

II the uplifters were half as active
in searching for the ways and means
to enable the farmer to sell his crops
to advantage as they are in devising
schemes to lend him money, which
after all he must repay, the man be-
hind the pillow would not long need tn
be a borrower That there is great
profit in farm products nobody now
/ questions; but it does not need a
statistical expert to prove that the
farmer gets only the smallest part of
this profit, writes Wilmer Atkinson In
the Denver Field and Farm. The
members of the milk combine amass
great wealth, while the owners OF the
cows are barely able to pay their feed
bills. The makers of milk products
are also men Of much substance; but
the man behind the COW can seldom
scrape enough together to give HIM
self brief holiday. The butter trust
is an assured fact and there is no
doubt about the financial rating OF
the members thereof; but the average
farmer is still obliged to give a go
day note for the COW he needs in or
der to keep the stream of golden but
ter undiminished.
OF the beef trust it seems almost su-
perfuous to write. The gentlemen
who form this trust which Utilities
every part of the steer, from the horns
to the tail, and every part of the hog
from the sequeal to the curl in its eau
dial appendage, are not suffering the
pangs and pains of poverty; though
the man who fed the steers and the
hogs may scarcely have where to lay
his head or know how to rid himself
of the mortgage that weighs him
down.
When we come to consider the
crops which the farmer plants In
faith from year to year, and gamers
by the sweat of his face, we find con-
ditions similar to those affecting other
productions of the farm. 1t is not the
, man who sows and reaps the wheat
and corn or laboriously tends his po-
tato field, to the end that the bugs and
!, beetles do not eat him out OF house
: and home, that wakes rich and AFRO
CANT. On the contrary, the real CLEAN
, ers of the boasted agricultural wealth
. of the county are the men who manlp
: ulate the markets and have strange
hold on the grain elevators. They own
limousines and go to Europe in the
9 summer and to Florida or California
8 in the winter. Few OF these SOFT
handed disseminators could raise
potato or a head Of wheat IL theil
lives depended on it; but they are
master artists at depressing the mar
ket when the crops are IN the hands
# of the men who grew them and boom
ing prices when they have thes'
same crops secure in elevators ant
storage warehouses.
n Therefore, what the farmer needs Il
y enable him to better his condition i
e not so much an easy means for Dol
t. rowing money-although this is
n good enough reform in its way-as re
E. lease from the trusts and combine
As that prey upon him and rob him
n what is justly his, because the laws
not adequately protect his interests.
re have already shown that there ar
u large prOHlS Hldue HUH on '"o p
Ill auctions of the farm and that tn
It pursuit of agriculture is attende
1e with much gain, but that much OF
i'd goes into the wrong pockets, and tn
at buraing question Of the day is how I
of secure an equsble division so that tn
OF producer shall get more and the mer
manipulation much less. To solve thi
Of riddle of the ages is task worthy
he the best minds of the twentieth Gel
i'll fury. The solution might not brin
is about the millennium, but 1t woul
ID give justice to a great body Of poop
er- and make agriculture what In the b
SIX ginning it was designed to be, an no
nd orable, well-compensated calling.
he