Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: The holding movement in agriculture / Jesse E. Pope

Collection:: Economics Books

THE HOLDING MOVEMENT IN AGRICULTURE 281 Government. The intermediate producer must be taken care of; for, if the price of wheat to the miller is fixed he in turn must be protected in the price of his flour. Production must be regulated; otherwise the supply will swamp the price fixing machine. The financing necessary for such an undertaking cannot be compassed by private effort but must be undertaken by the Government. And, fantastic as all this sounds, nothing less could enable the advocates of holding for higher prices to realize their aims. [ncidentally, it is to be noted that such regulation, if carried out even in the case of one staple crop, would be such a disturbing element that the Government would be called upon to come to the rescue, first, of every farmer and finally, of every business man in the country. The third argument brought forward for granting credit to the farmers for holding their crops is that, by cutting out useless middlemen, it would enable them to deal more directly with the consumer, thus bringing about a radical reduction in marketing costs. Perhaps no other economic question touching agriculture is receiving as much attention at the present time as the wide difference between what the farmer receives and what the con- sumer pays; and it is evident that if intermediate charges could be reduced it would redound to the benefit of the producer as well as of the consumer. How much saving cooperative holding can make in this respect is a moot question, the discussion of which Is outside the scope of this paper; but in passing I might suggest that, as far as I know, there is no evidence of unduly high costs in the marketing of our staple crops and that this plan of holding for higher prices calls for the paralleling of elaborate marketing machinery already in existence and predicates the storage of crops the prices of which will still be subject to all the risks and uncertainty growing out of the tyranny of nature and the machinations of man. Those advocates of holding who claim that the object is, not to raise prices to the consumer, but to do away with the useless middleman, should give proof of their sincerity by eliminating the element of speculation through hedg- ing, wherever possible, all crops put in storage. But as far as I have been able to observe this precaution has never been resorted to, and the holding plan resolves itself into a gigantic speculation which might easily involve the farmer in confusion and ruin. Lack of space has made it impossible to discuss the role of the

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