128 THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE' 



legislation designed to land pickpockets in the penitentiary en masse. 

 The farmers have a profound respect for the rights of any class of 

 men. As a class they never have and they never will ask for protection 

 against any legitimate competing interest. If there are ;tny noles made 

 in the constitution through class legislation it will not be done by the 

 men who milk cows, plow their fields, eat their dinner in the middle of 

 the day and go to bed at nine o'clock at night. The flags of national 

 danger are not waving upon the farm. They float over the palaces of 

 millionaires and above the centers of trade and commerce and political 

 life. The contending forces of wealth, unparalleled in all the ages, 

 gigantic combinations with the financial resources of an empire domi- 

 nate to a startling degree the legislation of the country. 



The patriotism and wisdom of our people will solve the problems 

 that are presented by organized labor on one side and organized capital 

 on the other. But the bed rock of national safety is the farmer. He 

 knows what it means to have property, and he knows what it means to 

 be compelled to work when tired and hungry. He will treat capital 

 fairly and labor fairly, and both labor and capital should be fair to him 

 when he demands honest competition in the markets. He has a clear 

 right to demand, and should demand, of State and national Legislatures 

 such laws as will tend to make pure our food products. The farmer is 

 the primary producer of all foods. He should fight for the integrity 

 of his products. Not only that, but the farming population is the great- 

 est consuming class in the country. A farmer not only wants his 

 butter and flour sold upon their merits, but he wants to know what he 

 gets when he buys sugar, and tea, and coffee, and vinegar, and spices, 

 and baking powder, and syrup, and canned fruits and meats. But for the 

 legislation of the last ten years this country would have been literally 

 flooded with food adulterations, and the farmer would have been the 

 principal victim in health and pocket. And yet when we try to stop 

 cheating in food products by the passage of effective laws, we are 

 charged with asking class legislation. 



The present Congress will consider and possibly pass a national food 

 law. The manufacturers of dishonest foods will fight it. They will have 

 friends in unexpected places. There was never a fraud on earth that 

 did not find defenders in the ranks of honest men. The men who 

 make preservatives will fight it. Some of the great meat packers will 

 be against it. The liquor interests will fear it. It will have ostensible 

 friends who will seek to emasculate it with weak and inefficient pro- 

 visions. It will be opposed on the ground of expense by men who 

 swallowed the Panama canal scheme with its appalling climatic and engi- 

 neering difficulties, its certain cost of hundreds of millions and its 

 international complications, without a murmur. It will be objected to 

 on constitutional grounds by men who crucify the constitution every 

 time they run for office. It will be supported by men who want the 

 offices provided for and by men who want a good law. This first class 

 will be a dangerous friend. The last class can pass the bill if it will go 



