for a good average
hen the 1st of December. Before the 1st of February that hen has laid
five dozen eggs, which are worth two dollars and a half. Take out five
cents for feed, two cents for the society that the hen has enjoyed, and
there is a clear profit of two dollars and forty-three cents, and
the farmer has got the hen left. Did any railroad wrecker ever make a
greater percentage than that? Talk about watering stock, is it any worse
than feeding a hen, to make her lay four-shilling eggs?

We have it from good authority that some farmers have actually gone so
far as to bribe legislators with eggs, to prevent their passing any law
fixing a rate for the sale of eggs. This is a serious charge, and we do
not vouch for it. It is probable that farmers who are sharp enough to
get a corner on eggs, by which they can be run up to a fictitious value,
are sharp enough not to lay themselves liable for bribery by giving eggs
directly to the members, but there are ways to avoid that. They can send
them to the residences of the members, where they are worth their weight
in gold almost.

Rich railroad owners have submitted to this soulless monopoly of the egg
business as long as they can, and we learn that they have organized a
state grange, with grips and passwords, and will institute subordinate
lodges all over the State to try and break up this vile business that is
sapping their life-blood.

Already a bill has been prepared for introduction into the legislature
to prohibit any manipulation of the egg market in the future. "Shall the
farmers of the State be allowed to combine with hens and roosters and
create a famine in eggs, an article of food on which so many people rely
to keep soul and body together?" they ask.

Our heart has bled, in the last sixty days, as well as our pocket-book,
while studying this question. We have seen men of wealth going about the
streets crying for an egg to cool their parched tongues, and they have
been turned away eggless, and gone to their palatial homes only to
suffer untold agonies, the result of those unholy alliances between
farmers and hens. They have tossed sleeplessly on their downy beds,
wondering if there was no balm in Gilead, no rooster there. They have
looked in vain for compassion on the part of the farmers, who haye only
laughed at their sufferings, and put up the price of eggs.

The time has arrived for action on the part of the wealthy consumers
of eggs, and we are glad the St