LIVE STOCK breeders' ASSOCIATION. l8l 



and these you must ring. They are in the farmer's corn-crib and 

 eating up his substance. But my subject is not hogs, but serpents, 

 the twin serpents, the Packers and the Railroads, and how to bruise 

 their heads. Every monopoly and trust affects the farmer, as well as 

 every other man not on the inside, and profiting by it, but the Beef 

 Trust and the Railroad monopoly are the two serpents whose slimy 

 coils are around the farmer. To shake them off, to cut them loose, 

 to bruise their heads, is the thought of the farmer. The farmer's heel 

 is just itching to get on them. And if I mistake not the signs of the 

 times, we are going to see the heel of Uncle Sam come down, and woe 

 be unto all that are beneath it. 



In the Vatican in Rome, of which you have heard the college 

 orator speak, is a celebrated work of art, a marble sculpture repre- 

 senting Laocoon and his two boys being strangled by snakes. The 

 faces of the father and sons express the most intense agony and pain 

 as they struggle in the coils of the venomous serpents. Laocoon was 

 a very strong man, but the serpents were smothering him. As I stood 

 before this group of father and children struggling in the coils of 

 those moccasin-headed snakes I thought, here is the American farmer, 

 and that big snake there drinking blood from his side is the Beef 

 Trust, and that other big snake wrapped about his arms to keep him 

 from striking is his twin brother, the Railroad. And those little 

 snakes — what did they represent? I couldn't tell, unless they were 

 the crooked betrayers of the people, who had crawled into the halls 

 of the Legislature, and were simply there to catch the overflow. 



I have chosen this subject because the Packers and the Railroads 

 are the two thorns now in the farmer's flesh, and because I believe 

 that the farmer will have to pick his own splinters out if he ever gets 

 them out. The farmer in the past has been too easy — too good — too 

 slow. He toiled all day and slept all night. He watched his own 

 stuff, and forgot to watch the other fellow. He looked down and not 

 up. The result is that the corporations have a patent on all his rights. 

 But now the farmer is awake and wants his six-bits back. They 

 were given or sold away by law, and by law they will have to return. 



For instance — I don't like to deal in generalities — let us get down 

 to particulars. The first time I went to market with my stock I 

 didn't like the way things were done there. The charges looked too 

 high, and there seemed to be too many middle men standing around. 

 The train got in a day late and we had to lay over. Yardage, feed 

 and commission seemed out of proportion to the price of stuff, and I 

 said, is this the way Missouri runs her stockyards? I was thinking 



