tocracy.

"We, at _our_ home, are straining every nerve and denying
ourselves of almost the comforts of life for the purpose of
meeting our mortgage that falls due on the first of July. Our
farmers here in the West are divided into four classes:

"_First._ Those who have failed to meet even the interest on
loans, who have been closed out, and are now renters, often, of
the very farms which they once fondly hoped to make their own.

"_Second._ Those who are still paying interest or keeping the
companies at bay in the courts until one more crop may ripen, but
without any well-founded hope of saving their homes.

"_Third._ Those who are skimping, pinching, almost starving to
pay their mortgages. I belong to this class. I still struggle
with the incubus.

"_Fourth._ A very few who wisely have never encumbered their
homes. I have given the classes in the order of their numerical
importance.

"I live in the beautiful little West Twin Creek valley about
seven miles in length. There are but two pieces of unencumbered
property in the valley; one belonging to a poor widow, and the
other to a bank president. Thirty-five per cent of the farms have
already passed into the hands of mortgagees; many of the
remainder have changed hands, shifted under renewals and various
expedients to avoid the ruination of closing out. This is more
than an average well-to-do community, selected from this or any
other central county of Kansas. We are realizing to the full that
'Beneficent Effect of Falling Prices' which was so ably set forth
(from his standpoint) by Dean Gordon in THE ARENA for March. If
all people were out of debt, falling prices might not work so
great injustice. But when a vast majority of the people are in
debt, and heavily in debt, and when a man talks of the blessings
that fall from falling prices, the conviction is forced upon us
that the killer of fools in his annual round has missed one
conspicuous example. The trouble is, our dollar of debt, instead
of decreasing, has more than doubled in its power as compared
with labor and the products of labor. Meanwhile our Solons talk
glibly of 'vested rights,' 'corporate rights,' etc., strenuously
objecting to squeezing the water out of their stocks, while they
have by legislation for the last