Reforms of breathtaking sweep are taking
place as the natural outcome of current conditions. The liquor traffic
has been tossed aside like a useless boot. Woman has stepped forth to
a sphere of active worth without upheaval. Just where lie the
boundaries of the impossible and who shall define them?

It is a far-seeing, clear-thinking New Farmer who has come forward in
the last decade. Through his associations, his marketing experiences,
his contact with railways and banks and manufacturers and governments
he has become a student of economics. At the same time he has
strengthened his thews and sinews for whatever may face him on the path
ahead.

And his eyes are wide open to the fact that there are "lions in the
path!"

Wait a minute, Mr. Business Man! Before condemning this Western farmer
out of hand, put yourself in his place and try for a moment in all
fairness to forget your own viewpoint. It may be that you have not
even seen the prairies. Have you ever been at sea with not a thing in
sight but water, sky, horizon? Imagine the water to be land, and
yourself living in a one-room shack or a little low sod hut bewhiskered
with growing grass. The nearest railway was fifty miles away and you
got so lonesome that the howl of a coyote or the cry of owls in the
night nearly drove you crazy. Neighbors so scarce your social
pleasures were cut off by distance and you reared your family on that
homestead twenty-five miles from a doctor, a church or a school.

When you made the long trip in for supplies in those early days you
found you had to pay anywhere up to twice as much as their market value
while for what you had to sell you had to take from twenty-five to
fifty per cent. less than the market value. The implements you simply
had to have for your work you bought on the instalment plan with
interest at ten and twelve per cent. for the privilege.

When you had survived three years of this and with high hopes took your
patent to the mortgage company to raise a loan at ten per cent. you
found you couldn't get accommodation. Thereupon in marched your
implement and other creditors with a chattel mortgage on everything you
had--except the missus and the kids and the baby's bottley-by!

Then in the beautiful hot month of August it blew up black one day and
the chickens scurried for shelter and you and the wife stood with your
noses flattened against the window-pane--unless it was only oiled
paper--and watched