350 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



be reduced to a condition of tenancy, and we might say poverty, 

 just as they have been in every older country. The business inter- 

 ests just mentioned, together with the various departments of 

 agriculture and with the leading farmers of the nation, have set 

 about to prevent the deplorable condition in which practically every 

 foreign country found itself before measures of relief were even 

 started. It is no more true now than it has been in the past, and 

 always will be, that the farmers' interests and the interests of the 

 business men should be one, but notwithstanding these fundamental 

 truths things have worked in the very opposite. 



The very nature of a free-born American farmer is that he 

 loves the liberty of standing alone, but the time is now here when 

 we must lay aside this inborn feeling of independence and realize 

 that we are, to at least a small degree, our brother's keeper. 



The very nature of the farmer's work with its long hours and 

 wide field of operations has made it difficult for him to work out 

 the solution of his own problems or to even take measures to throw 

 safeguards around himself and his conditions. This being true, 

 he has been largely the object of the human vampire to rob him of 

 his hard-earned money. Then it becomes necessary, when private 

 interests will not assist him in safeguarding his conditions, that 

 the government must step in and take a hand largely in his affairs. 

 The governments of all other countries have been largely instru- 

 mental in alleviating the conditions of the tillers of the soil. 



Our towns and cities have to a great degree been playing only 

 the part of parasites when they should have been helpers for the 

 farming interests. Millions of dollars of food products are annu- 

 ally going to waste because neither our towns, nor the farmers 

 themselves, have been able to find adequate markets, yet there are 

 many places where these same products would be in demand. It 

 occurs to me that one of the great functions of any town would be to 

 look after the market or the business end of farming, yet in a very 

 great degree this has not been accomplished. 



A great many men in what is termed "business" have simply 

 made their money by the transfer of wealth rather than any produc- 

 tion that they have made. Wealth in this way is only a relative 

 term, the same as when I win a dollar you lose it. The time has 

 come that if the business man will not fly down from his selfish 

 perch and assist us all to scratch for bugs, the farmers must get 

 together on a common ground to expel a common enemy. 



This brings us to the point of what we shall do to relieve some 



