oduced a congested market. Logically,
there has followed, periods of stagnation, labor riots on account of
reduced wages, periods of enforced idleness, and panics in the money
market; all culminating in a loud demand for relief from the burden of
over-production, by securing control of foreign markets. So completely
has the manufacturing craze dominated the commercial and political
economy of the republic, that both leaders and people are blind to the
real cause of the calamity. An aggressive and progressive minority begin
to realize, that the laborer and the farmer are no longer free, that
they are the slaves of capital with its factories and machines, or of
railroad combines, which control all lines of transportation. But no one
sufficiently understands the situation, to be able to answer why.

"Now let us study the history of agriculture, during the past forty
years. This trying period of transition, has been marked by many
changes. The small farm family, shorn of its ability to manufacture,
even in a crude way; for shoes, clothing, bedding and table linen, must
patronize factories located in distant cities. In order to pay for these
things, much farm produce must be shipped to remote markets. In both
cases, such heavy freights, commissions and profits, are paid to lines
of transportation, middle men and handlers, that at the end of the
year, the farmer's net proceeds are reduced to zero, or at least very
close to that point. If the farmer be in debt, he finds himself unable
to pay the interest on the indebtedness. If the farm represents much
invested capital, the net income of the farm becomes too meagre to pay
even a moderate rate of interest on its cost value; therefore its
selling value must shrink to the level of its reduced income. In this
way a large share of the available assets of the small farmer, are swept
away. The savings of years, are swallowed up and lost. Savings, that in
the aggregate, amount to many millions of dollars. What has become of
these values? They have been absorbed by the cities and the railroad
monopolies, whose servants the cities are.

"Four decades of this process, has robbed the farm-center, as a unit of
rural society, of its former wealth, independence and power. Rural
society as a whole, is no stronger than its weakest unit. This is why
agricultural districts are depopulated, while cities are over crowded.
These results are the work of the competitive system, with its wasteful,
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