Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1901 — UTOPIA FOR FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

UTOPIA FOR FARMERS.

G. H. Phillips Tells Them How to Keep Corn at 40 Cents. Government granaries In Chicago bigger than those that Joseph built in old Egypt, and a farmers’ bank with $50,000,000 capital, also in Chicago, are the two agencies which George H. Phillip* look* forward to as the means of putting the farmers of the United States In a business paradise, establishing for them a trust which can fight on equal terms with any other trust in the country and making 40 cents the bottom price of corn forever and ever more. Mr. Phillips was given a banquet at th* West Hotel in Minneapolis by the National Grain Growers’ Association, and in ttye course of his remarks took his farmer admirers into his confidence and predicted good times for them. He sp*ke on the basis of his theory that the 3,000,000 farmers of the land are not “too-many headed” to act as a body and that if they do act together they can fix their own prices on commodities as easily as any trust magnate* can do it. "Let the government tax th* farmer a cent a bushel on his corn crop,” he said, “and with the money build elevators in which to store a hundred million of corn and pay 40 cents basis Chicago market for it and the world will pay the same for it. There is not so much of it that we need worry about an extra large crop or tw’o. With the government ready to pay 40 cents for it the farmer can borrow 30 cents from his country bank if he needs money and carry the surplus for seven years, if need be, as did Joseph 5,000 years or *0 ago. “Another dream of this sort is one I have had of a farmers’ bank located at Chicago. Make the capital $25,000,000 or $50,000,000. Sell the stock in $lO shares, not less than ten shares subscribed to a farmer, who could, if he *o desired, dispose of some of his share* to a neighbor,”