Grain dealer

“ Up until now all the troubles of the farmers in marketing their own grain may be said to have come from sources outside themselves; but in the present instance they had nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament. It arose at a time, too, when the other grain dealers were beginning to recognize the farmers as a force in the grain market—a force which had come to stay. ”

“ The American dealer speculating in grain is under the absolute necessity of being quickly and surely informed regarding the agricultural situation in all countries of the world that are rich in grain, that export or import ”

“ The grain dealers do not usually buy grain from the producers, but from the agents of government, who, receiving the revenue in kind, are glad to devolve upon others the business of conveying it to the places where the prince, his chief civil and military officers, the bulk of his troops, and the artisans who supply the wants of these various persons, are assembled. The money dealers lend to the unfortunate cultivators, when ruined by bad seasons or fiscal exactions, the means of supporting life and continuing their cultivation, and are repaid with enormous interest at the next harvest ”

“ In office or farmhouse an ear to a telephone is all that is necessary.
A grain exchange, then, is the market-place where grain dealers meet to secure information and maintain regulations for the prompt performance of contracts. The exchange organization does not deal in grain, but has for its sole purpose the protection of those who do and the facilitating of transactions; in other words, it is on the ground to see that the grain trade is carried on in an honest and capable manner and to punish offenders against proper business ethics and established rules. ”

“ In such seasons of distress, we often, in India, hear of very injudicious interference with grain dealers on the part of civil and military authorities, who contrive to persuade themselves that the interest of these corn-dealers, instead of being in accordance with the interests of the people, are entirely opposed to them; and conclude that, whenever grain becomes dear, they have a right to make them open their granaries, and sell their grain at such price as they, in their wisdom, may deem reasonable. ”

“ Under these laws, foreign corn is bought at low prices in years of plenty, bonded in our warehouses, and thrown into our markets at a moment when a bad harvest occasions a rise in the price of grain, necessary to the remuneration of our farmers, thus, in fact, in a very great degree, placing them at the mercy of the speculators, who, by various means, influence the prices to suit their own purposes; to such a system the admission of foreign corn, on a fixed duty, would be far preferable. ”

“ In the next place, the purchase of so very large a portion as a fourth of the annual subsistence—not from our own cultivators, who consume at an average five or six pounds a-head of our manufactures, but from foreign growers, who consume little or nothing—has had a most serious effect upon the home trade. The introduction of 12,000,000 or 13,000,000 quarters of grain a-year into our markets, from countries whose importation of our manufactures is almost equal to nothing, is a most dreadfully depressing circumstance to our manufacturers. ”

“ Abolish the money-lender, and the general body of cultivators would have nothing to depend upon but the harvest of a single year. The money-lender deals chiefly in grain and in specie. In those districts where the staples of export are largely grown, the cultivators commonly sell their crops to travelling brokers, who re-sell to larger dealers, and so on until the commodities reach the hands of the agents of the great shipping houses. ”

“ Stored grain came out of its hiding places at every country cross-roads to beg for cars; stock feeders drove their market cattle unheard-of distances, across the tracks of competing lines, over and around obstacles of every sort, to pour them into the loading corrals of the Trans-Western. ”

“ There are other concerns engaged in the business of producing plain and self-rising flour, by a process of mixing and blending, and selling the product in the same market in competition with respondents and with the grinders; but these do not name themselves millers, mills, or milling companies, or hold themselves out in any way as grinders of grain. The business involved is large and the competition among the several concerns substantial ”

“ Near to them is the grain-market. Here are men and women with their grain-bags, made of skins of goats sewn up, and with only an opening at the neck. They sit about everywhere, while the buyers walk about among them and inspect the samples with a gravity and intentness which would do no discredit to Mark-lane. Their purchases probably will not exceed two or three pounds’ weight, but they are as careful over the matter as a brewer would be who was going to make a bid for a ship’s cargo. The grain is almost entirely barley, and splendid barley too. ”

“ Perhaps the general reader is more familiar with these mad scenes of "The Pit," as the trading floor is called, than with the steadily turning marketing machinery of which they are but a penumbra.
The modern grain exchange is much more than a mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real purpose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified—drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. ”

“ The greatest part of our corn is well known to be raised by those, who pay rent for the ground which they employ, and of whom, few can bear to delay the sale of one year's produce to another.
It is, therefore, vain to hope that large stocks of grain will ever remain in private hands: he that has not sold the corn of last year, will, with diffidence and reluctance, till his field again; the accumulation of a few years would end in a vacation of agriculture, and the husbandman would apply himself to some more profitable calling. ”

“ Another thing there is in our markets worthy to be looked into, and that is the recarriage of grain from the same into lofts and cellars, of which before I gave some intimation; wherefore if it were ordered that every seller should make his market by an hour, or else the bailey or clerk of the said market to make sale thereof, according to his discretion, without liberty to the farmers to set up their corn in houses and chambers, I am persuaded that the prices of our grain would soon be abated. ”

“ Paul Boards of Trade and the New York Produce Exchange are the three great agencies for dealing in grain in the United States. 225 Buffalo, Duluth, Baltimore and Philadelphia are also important markets. Adjuncts to these markets are the great terminal elevators capable of holding almost indefinitely enormous quantities of wheat and other grain. On the Pacific Coast all the wheat is handled in the bags, as is the custom in the other markets of the world. ”

“ Owners of flour mills want to know how much they will have to grind, and what they will have to pay for it. Men who buy and sell wheat, owners of grain elevators who store wheat, bakers of bread and makers of breakfast foods and macaroni are interested, too. Village storekeepers are anxious to know if the farmers will have little money or a great deal to spend. Factories want to know how much goods to make, railroads how many grain cars they will need. Every farmer who grows wheat wants to know what other farmers are doing, and what his wheat will be worth. ”

“ One man driving the header, one each to the three wagons, two feeding and tending the thrasher, one fitting and tying up the wheat-bags as the cleaned and finished grain comes pouring from the machine, and one hand at the straw-rake, are all busily at work. Very speedily the field is cleared, and the just now waving grain lies piled in a stack of wheat-bags in the center, waiting the departure of the "thrashing crowd," to be hauled by the farmer to the warehouse. ”

“ The foreigners have now taken the whole of the foreign grain trade exclusively into their own hands. We are informed by the first corn-merchants of Leith, that there is not a single order sent for grain from this country. "The finest Dantzic wheat, free on board," writes one of our correspondents, "will not be sold to a British merchant for less than 38s. the quarter; and as no more than 40s. or 41s. could be got for it here, there is no margin for a profit, and the risk is not run. But the foreigner will send it on his own account, and sell it here at 38s. and realise a profit. ”

“ Customs mills are defined in this report as mills grinding wheat, corn, and other grain furnished from farms in the neighborhood, and are usually denominated grist-mills. Merchant mills are large manufacturing establishments supplying the home market, and exporting flour to the principal foreign countries. ”

“ The average quantity imported one year with another amounts only, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade, to twenty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight quarters of all sorts of grain, and does not exceed the five hundred and seventy-first part of the annual consumption. But as the bounty upon corn occasions a greater exportation in years of plenty, so it must of consequence occasion a greater importation in years of scarcity, than in the actual state of tillage would otherwise take place. ”

“ The fourth and most important stated the average price of British corn at which free importation was to be allowed, and below which it was to be prohibited, and this for wheat was fixed at eighty shillings per quarter. An exception was made in favour of grain produced in the British colonies, which might be imported when British grown wheat was at sixty-seven shillings. ”

“ The reasons against supplying the stores by tender were even stronger here than in regard to grain, for it would have been far easier to engross stock than wheat. The system adopted, however, was not quite the same. ”

“ Formerly—in the first years of the century, up to 1842—the farmer had to contend against a foreign supply of grain amounting to little more than 1,000,000 quarters per annum—now, in some cases, under obligations contracted on the faith of protection to native industry, he is called upon to make the vain struggle against an inundation of foreign corn amounting to upwards of 1,000,000 quarters per month! He cannot, it is evident, maintain the contest long. ”

“ It would take that time to beat down the British farmer; to convince the cultivators of inferior lands of the folly of attempting a competition with the great grain districts of the Continent. Providence has done the thing at once. We have got on at railway speed to the blessings of the new system. Free-trade was to lead to the much-desired substitution of six million quarters of home for six million quarters of foreign grain in three years. ”

“ The Intention of the bounty on the exportation of corn is to prevent the price of corn from ever falling so low as otherwise it would often naturally do, This either raises the average price of corn in the country, or it does not. ”

“ Why, if a bounty on the exportation of corn be so favourable to the production, of corn, should not a bounty on the exportation of wool be favourable to the production of wool? Why, if the exportation of corn have such an effect to produce plenty of corn at home, should not the exportation of wool have an effect to produce plenty of wool at home? ”

“ To remedy this evil, an employé ventured to suggest that any one who could procure corn should be permitted to supply the capital. The situation of affairs was critical, for the people were beginning to murmur; and the suggestion was carried into effect. No sooner was the permission accorded, than a multitude of farmers and merchants hastened to pour grain into the market, and plenty soon reappeared. ”

“ After the business of the farmer, that of the corn merchant is in reality the trade which, if properly protected and encouraged, would contribute the most to the raising of corn. It would support the trade of the farmer, in the same manner as the trade of the wholesale dealer supports that of the manufacturer. ”

“ If during the last years, when wheat had reached an especially low price, certain venders began to lay in a store of grain, waiting for a price, then this storage was so difficult that, as soon as the prices advanced at the beginning of the spring of this year, and reached fifty and sixty kopeks a pud, then all the grain was sold and cleaned out, and nothing remained of the provisions of previous years. In 1840 not only had the proprietors and tradesmen plenty of provisions, but everywhere among the muzhiks were from three to five years' stores of old grain. ”

“ It not being worth while for each man to go singly some miles for his victuals, the proprietor was desirous of arranging that one should go and make marketing for himself and all the rest; but there was an obstacle—under terror of a late act against forestalling, no one could venture to sell so much grain to any single person as was required for this body of miners. ”

“ The four great lines from the Lakes to the seaboard would each have to run four hundred cars a day for half the year to carry this grain to market. Speaking of the grain-trade, Mr. Ruggles says,—"Its existence is a new fact in the history of man. In quantity, it already much exceeds the whole export of cereals from the Russian Empire, the great compeer of the United States, whose total export of cereals was in 1857 but forty-nine million bushels, being less than half the amount carried in 1861 upon the American Lakes. ”