Mr. McKay is fairly correct in calculating 4 1-2 bushels of wheat at $1.90 as the raw cost of wheat that goes into a barrel of flour. This is $8.55. Also 70 pounds of feed at $35 per ton, or $1.22 is sufficiently correct.
He makes his mistake by putting the selling price of flour at $11.20 per barrel. No mill in Spokane or anywhere else gets $11.20 a barrel for its output. $11.20 represents the retail selling price of best Montana patent flour to the family trade. The mill perhaps gets $10.60 or thereabouts wholesale. Is it fair to charge the grocers and jobbers profit to the miller?
As a matter of fact, the miller gets nearer $9.80 wholesale for its patent flour from local soft wheat. Furthermore, only 75 percent of the barrel is patent flour, the remaining 25 percent being cutoff, or second grade flour, which sells for about $1.00 a barrel.
Any mill will sell Mr. McKay's patent flour by the carload at $10 a barrel laid down in Spokane, so he most certainly is in error by stating that the wholesale price is $11.20 in Spokane.
He also forgets to include cost of containers. Sacks at present cost around 40c per barrel in cotton and 25c in jutes. He omits the item of freight. Only a small percentage of them as to what a man brings in so the boys might as well bring a suit case full of clothes and be ready for anything.
Those of us in the first installment have all had to  Buy clothes since we came. 