There are two ways of reaching a conclusion--one by approaching it logically on facts laid down; the other by jumping to it across a yawning lack of detail. At the end of his month of investigation the farmer's scout had a regular rag-bag of material out of which to fashion a patchwork report. A grain man might have condemned it as a "crazy quilt" because bits of high color obtruded inharmoniously. But if here and there an end was short or a bit of information on the bias, it was because the "Farmers' Representative" had not been treated with sufficient frankness. He had to make the best of the materials allowed him and his natural tendency to bright-colored metaphor may have been quickened. He hit out straight from the shoulder in all sincerity at conditions as they appeared to him. He thought he saw five companies controlling the exporting business, and also their margin of profit, so that they were able to keep out smaller dealers who might have the temerity and the necessary capital to try exporting on their own account. He saw the smaller dealers in turn stem-winding their prices by those of the exporters, controlling the prices paid for street and track wheat throughout the country; thereby, he reasoned, it became possible to set special prices at any given point by the simple expedient of wiring the necessary instructions to the operator at that point to pinch independent competition. He saw elevator companies cutting their charges at certain points to kill off competition from "farmers' elevators" which sold to independent dealers. All this he was sure he saw. The sampling appeared to be carried on in a systematic and satisfactory manner. The grading, too, appeared to be uniform enough as regarded the standard grades; but in the item of color there seemed just cause for complaint. Lack of color, a trifling number of imperfectly formed kernels or the suspicion of a wrinkle on the bran apparently doomed a sample to low grade no matter how heavy and flinty the wheat might be. This seemed scarcely fair to Partridge, who bore in mind that the sunny seasons of past years had been succeeded by cloudier ones, the dry autumns by wet ones and that with stacking discontinued and much of the farmers' wheat left long in stock, bleaching was bound to follow. So that if the Chief Grain Inspector were a "crank on color," he should remember that beauty was only skin deep. The fracture and microscopic and weighing tests seemed to be the only reasonable tests which could be applied quickly; the milling test was the only one which was absolutely correct. Any rapid eye test which pretended to determine whether there was sixty-one per cent. or fifty-nine per cent. of Red Fife wheat in a given sample struck the Farmers' Representative as farcical; yet this was sufficient to make the difference of a grade and sometimes a difference of seven cents per bushel in the price obtained.