The courier-index., 1920-05-14
DOWN THE DISHONEST
 COMMISSION MERCHANT

"The way for farmers to pro- tect themselves and to put dishon- est commission merchants out of business is to organize for the solv- ing of the marketing problem" de- clares the Arkansas Gazette, editor tally. Probably the best solution is for all the farmers of a district adapted to a certain crop to raise that crop in such quantities that buyers will go to the community and compete with one another for the produce, paying for each car load as soon as the farmers get 1t ready. The next best solution is for the farmers to form cooper ative marketing association, have the farm products we'll graded and we'll packed and employ marketing agent to go with every car shipped and to see personally that it brings all that it is worth.
 "In Yell county they grow the famous Nancy Hall sweet potatoes and they grow them by the house. ful. They know how to grow them and as a result there are no better sweet potatoes than those Yell coun- ty produces. The potato growers of Yell county must now take up new work. They must devise means to protect themselves in the market in order to get what is coming to them.
 "A Yell county sweet potato grow CT told, in recent issue of the Dardanelle Post-Dispatch, of a sad experience he and two of his neigh bors had in selling some of their product. He told it to warn his fellow growers. The warning IS valuable.
 "This grower, with his neighbors, loaded two cars of fine Nancy Hall sweet potatoes and shipped them to Chicago. They also went to Chica- 90 and when they arrived there they found the market for sweet potatoes strong because there was only one other car in the city. They gave the sale of their. potatoes to a commission firm and came home. Three weeks later the commission firm paid them at the rate of 37 Hs cents per bushel when sweet pota- toes were quoted in Chicago at $2.75 per bushel.
 Arkansas farmers have been robbed time and again by dishonest commission merchants in various cities. Generally the farmers have done as these Yell county potato growers did-charge the loss to ex- perience and let it go at that. Last summer a Lonoke man made four ! shipments of choice cantaloupes by express and his total return for the | four shipments was less than $3.O0, i He charged the loss to experience.
 "One of the few cases in which an Arkansas grower got what was coming to him from a dishonest commission merchant was that of a planter near Black Rock This planter raised fine watermelons on his place and he induced some of his tenants to plant little ground to melons also. He undertook to market the melons. The market in this case was Kansas City. The first car of melons brought a high price. the second a moderate price, | the third less than the second, the forth less than the third and the 1 fifth not enough to pay for the gathering of the melons and haul ing them to the railroad station.
 The planter decided to investigate.
 He went to Kansas City and in the
 guise of a buyer called on the com
 mission man who had handled the
 melons. Melons of the fifth ship
 ment were offered to him at a high
 price. The commission man told him the melons were unusually good