thirty-five years remorselessly
squeezed the _value_ out of our property.

"When our debts were contracted the values of everything were
double what they now are. I could then have sold my farm for
three thousand dollars; now, although it has been much improved,
it would go a-begging at one thousand dollars. Perhaps there is
not as much distress in our country as there was three or four
years ago. People have adjusted themselves somewhat to their
straitened circumstances, and a few are becoming actually
reconciled to their condition! I heard one man who had recently
failed in business as a grain-dealer say, 'Well, Cleveland is
right on this money question; we want a money good in Yurrup or
any other part of the world.' As I looked at the battered hat of
this personage, at the split toes of his shoes, the ragged elbows
of his coat, and the rents in his demoralized nether garments, I
could but ejaculate, 'May the Lord have mercy on your ignorant
soul! what does it matter to _you_ what kind of money they use in
Europe?'

"We are now taking the advice of Governor Morrill, who says: 'If
you cannot get seventy-five cents a day, work for fifty cents.'
Our Republican speakers advise us to dress plainly, live the
same, and work still harder. We are told to 'stop running around
to Alliances and picnics.' We have taken this advice. _We had to
take it!_ But we have now reached the bottom. We can curtail our
dress no further without making our garb identical with our
complexion. We cannot further reduce our rations and live. We
cannot extend the hours of labor, for most of us have already
adopted the blessed eight-hour system; that is, we work eight
hours _before_ dinner and eight hours _after_ dinner.

"However, Kansas is coming to the front again. Since the mortgage
companies are willing to do business once more our Governor is no
longer 'ashamed of the State.' Occasionally a Republican
politician squirms and kicks as the pressure is turned on. The
eloquent and volcanic Ingalls breaks out at intervals. In these
eruptions he pours lava upon his party in fine style. But he does
not break out often enough!

"The most serious bar to the progress of reform is that the
people are too poor to pay for reform papers and magazines; out
of these the