Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/531

 industry of this state, viz., that of grain raising for shipment to market. In the shipping seasons an agent of the elevator can always be found in attendance there to receive, weigh, grade, and distribute the grain—principally wheat—in different compartments in the building, according to the grade to which it belongs. Usually the proprietor of the elevator is himself a buyer of grain as well as a warehouseman, and the station where the elevator is located is practically-the only place in the vicinity, or for miles around, where the producer can find either storage or a buyer for-his grain. It is conceived to be important to the seller that this grain should be in hand, and accessible at the railroad station, where it can be disposed of on any day when the market is favorable or when necessity compels a sale. The elevators and warehouses of the state have grown up as an inseparable adjunct of the farming interests of the state. They reciprocally depend upon and sustain each other. It is in fact difficult to conceive of a system in which the peculiar grain raising and shipping industry of this state can be successfully carried on independently and without the practical co-operation of the elevators and warehouses located at the stations. These structures are well adapted to the uses for which they are built, and, while it is true that the railroads in the state are required by statute to furnish box cars to those who may desire to ship in carload lots, yet it appears in this case, and it isa fact of common knowledge here that this mode of shipping grain is wholly inadequate as a means of transporting to market the surplus grain produced in this state, where the yield is as large as.it frequently has been in years past. Nor is shipping by carload lots so convenient to small producers, who more frequently than otherwise would be unable to hold a box car at a station long enough to enable them to haul their grain from a distance and fill such car. Tho course of business which has gradually grown up at the elevators is for the farmer to deliver his grain at the elevator, and there it is weighed and graded by the agent in charge. The farmer receives a warehouse receipt, specifying the quantity and grade delivered, and thereafter the farmer never sees his wheat. It is shipped out from day to day to suit the convenience of the elevator. The farmer, if he