of it."

"Not even to supply the farmers who don't belong to our Association?"

"That's what I said. You're going to make a convenience of me when you
rob me of all my cash business. The only business I could do would be
with farmers who wanted credit."

Did the Grain Growers say: "That's their lookout, then. Let them join us
or go twineless"? No. They decided to bring in their co-operative
shipment as planned, but to allow the merchant to handle it on commission
in order to prevent any injustice to the other farmers.

Incidents like that can be recorded from all over the country. It does
not take very many of them to compel the honest conviction that equity of
citizenship for all the people in every walk of life means more to these
farmers than a high-sounding shibboleth. That being so, it becomes
difficult to accept the slur of utter selfishness--the idea that the
farmers are auto-intoxicated, a pig-headed lot who cause trouble for
nothing. It is very hard to believe that Everybody Else is good and kind
and sincere and true, affectionate one to another with brotherly love,
not slothful in business; for one knows that the best of us need the
prayers of our mothers!

When these Grain Growers started out they did not know very much about
what was going on. They had their suspicions; but that was all. To-day
they know. Their business activities have taught them many things while
providing the resources for the fight that is shaping unless the whole
monopolistic system lets go its stranglehold.

Yes, the farmers do talk about freedom in buying and selling; also about
tariff reform. They point out that there are criminal laws to jail
bankers who dared to charge from twenty-five per cent. to forty-two per
cent. for the use of money; that food and clothing and the necessaries of
life are the same as money and that high tariff protection which fosters
combines and monopolies is official discrimination against the many in
favor of the few; that there are other and more just forms of taxation
and that all old systems of patronage and campaign funds have got to go
if the grave problems of these grave times are to be met successfully.

It is no old-time "Hayseed" who is discussing these things. It is a New
Farmer altogether. The Farmers' Movement is no fancy of the moment
either, but the product of Time itself. It is a condition which has
developed in our rural life as the corolla of increased opportunities f