Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1917 — Western Farmers in Big Wheat Gamble [ARTICLE]

Western Farmers in Big Wheat Gamble

Some of the biggest wheat gamblers in the country are 2,000 miles from the Chicago pit and the Minneapolis wheat exchange and they have no private wire connecting them with any ticker service.. They are the wheat ranchers of eastern Washington, who produced about 50,000,000, bushels in 1916 and 75,000,000 jushels in 1915, according to the Spocane Chronicle. Checks for $150,000 and $250,000 received by a number of ranchers for their 1916 crop have turned the heads of hundreds of growers and they are staking everything on the 1917 crop. It will be a fine crop year for thousands of the growers and every cent J hey can command will go into additional acreage, machinery and labor.