The Farmers' Alliance Grain Rebellion
Palouse farmers bypass railroad-controlled elevators to handle their own grain, yielding massive profits.
The story, cleaned up
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In the Palouse country, farmers are successfully handling their own grain to escape the grip of the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific railroad-affiliated elevator companies. What started as an Alliance experiment in Oakesdale in 1890 has grown into a powerful network of thirty warehouses. By storing their own wheat and shipping in bulk, farmers have increased prices by 5 cents per bushel and paid shareholders dividends averaging over 47 percent. The movement is now debating where to build a new terminal elevator, rejecting Everett in favor of a major established port like Seattle or Tacoma to gain access to world markets.
“The Northern Pacific and Pacific Coast Elevator companies... had controlled the grain trade of this country, and had been able to dictate prices and crowd out individual buyers.”
This reflects the historic tension between regional farmers and the railroad monopolies that controlled the flow of goods to tidewater. It highlights an early era of agricultural cooperatives successfully organizing against corporate 'middlemen' to secure better margins.
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