The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-21
FARMER AFRAID OF REACTION
 OF PROSPERITY
Wild Grain Market Sky rockets Higher Every
 Day
(By HAROLD ANDREWS) Leased Wire to Age-Herald)

CHICAGO, July 20.-How will the wild grain market and the bumper crops of the middle west and south west eventually affect the farmer, who for few weeks has been experiencing an unexpected prosperity?
 Just now everything is rosy. The farmer is buying new cars. He is put ting money in the bank. He is paying debts. Banks in agricultural sections are exchanging long time pa per. some of it extended for many months, for real cash.
 And the widest kind of scenes are being enacted dnily in the grain pits of the Chicago board of trade, where a rising market is making fortunes for some and losing money for others. Experienced traders agree that any con- tinued rise of prices must terminate when the Canadian grain crop goes to harvest. even though that crop prom ises to be 50 per cent short of normal, if reports received at the board of trade here are to be believed.
 Farmers Suspicious
 The farmers are commencing to ask themselves whether the boom in buying is part of move designed by some powerful financial interests for the pur. pose of initiating prices, so that gen. tlemen speculatitely inclined may reap sudden profit thereby. And some op- orators who have not ventured into the cratic market are wondering whether a crash is not imminent. They point out that the present prices are unnat- ural, that the rise in the price of grains is bound to be reflected in rising prices to the consumer, and that flour already has gone up.
 The whole grain market has been driven into an artificial condition, some of the biggest producers and operators feel, and the far seeing ones are view ing the future with apprehension. A crash usually follows imitation, these men point out, and some of the officials of responsible agricultural organiza- tions are even now inclined to believe that the bottom is due to drop out of the market in few weeks. Why or how they will not say. Nor will they allow themselves to be quoted. At any rate, some traders and farm represen- tatives forsee a reaction looming in the not far distant future.
 Fear Prosperity Won't Last
 Some farm organizations feel that the sudden wave of proseprity that has struck the grain belt is of the mushroom type, like an oil well region prosperity, where plenty of money is in circulation as long as the wells come in. The golden flow of wheat and money can not long continue, they believe. So farmers are getting advice through officials of their organizations to put their money away for a rainy day.
 The farmer now, as much as he ever has been, is suspicious of the speculat- ing crowd and in many states the Pro- ducer's associations believe the board of trade and like organizations ought to be driven out of business. What is needed, in the opinion of most of these organizations, is some method whereby the farmer will be assured of a fair price for his produce every season, re- gardless of how the gentlemen who gamble on crop conditions and weather feel about it. That would help the farmer, these organizations have said, more than wildly fluctuating prices, which are just as apt to go down as up.