GRAIN ELEVATORS

warehouses for the storage of grain. These buildings are especially adapted for the storage of the various grains, especially wheat, in pulk, resembling large tanks, from which the grain is drawn as though liquid through large pipes into the cars when being loaded for shipping. ‘The grain elevator may be called a peculiarly Afmerican institution, being firs} employed in this country in the Middle West shortly after the wide prairies were first planted with grain, and following this development westward. It is especially significant in an economic sense; for it is about the grain elevator that the struggle between the producer and the speculating grain merchants has centered. It was in the late seventies and the early eighties that the farmers began realizing that certain private individuals and corporations had been erecting great lines of grain elevators along the railroads. The owners of these warehouses were in close touch with the banking interests and the railroads. By combinations among these middlemen, vast quantities of grain were cornered by them in storage, with the result that prices could be artificially stimulated after the grain had left the hands of the producers. The grain elevator was found to be the strategic point in these operations. Realizing this, the more intelligent grain producers have emphasized the importance of the elevators being owned and controlled by themselves. ‘Thus organizations of farmers have been formed in the principal grain producing states with the object of erecting their own storage plants, enabling them to retain po e ion of their produce until the rise in prices. In the two Dakotas and in parts of adjoining states a movement is established having for its object the ownership of grain elevators by the state governments. Jn North Dakota it was this appeal especially which brought the Non-Partisan League temporarily into power. Government ownership of grain elevators has, however, not proven @ succe . The newly organized Grain Growers As so ownership of the elevators by the growers themselves, and will establish this principle on a nationwide basis.