Trapped by the Wheat Harvest
A collapse in transport leaves massive piles of wheat rotting in the open air.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Dudley Eshelman returned to-day from Klickitat county, where he has been visiting relatives for the past week. He reports times very dull there and money exceedingly close. Only about half of the wheat has been hauled out of the county, and buyers refuse to take any more on account of lack of transportation facilities. At Columbus a ten-acre field is covered with sacks of wheat, seven layers high, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and no possibility of its being moved for two months. On the opposite side of the river, at The Dalles, the amount stored and sacked is estimated at a million of bushels. For the wheat sold, Mr. Eshelman says, the farmers received 61 cents, and were compelled to pay 11 cents for sacks.
“At Columbus a ten-acre field is covered with sacks of wheat, seven layers high, exposed to the inclemency of the weather.”
The vulnerability of farmers to the 'bottleneck' of logistics is a persistent theme in Washington agriculture, highlighting the tension between production capacity and the infrastructure required to reach the market.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.