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