FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 687 



living under a false economical system that robs the majority of the 

 people for the benefit of a few, under a protective tariff, and for the sake 

 of these interests taking their profits from our labors here in the grain 

 belt, these little children are permitted to starve and freeze each year so 

 that the flow of wealth of this country into their pockets be not inter- 

 rupted. 



To illustrate, I want to give you but one instance of the cost of high 

 living that has been forced onto the American people by these interests 

 by each of the middlemen adding their living and profit to an article 

 before it reaches the point of consumption. I have seen peaches rotting 

 on the ground by the thousands of bushels in northern Missouri and 

 southern Iowa for the want of a market, and offered at 10 cents a 

 bushel at the orchard with no purchaser, and finally hogs turned in to 

 consume them for the want of a better outlet, when upon the same day 

 in the city of Des Moines, less than 125 miles from these orchards, 

 peaches of the same quality were selling for $3.00 per bushel in order 

 that the high cost of living be maintained at its high level. Now what 

 is true of peaches is true of every one of the foodstuffs raised upon our 

 farms, including the meats that our black beauties produce. 



As it can be seen under our economic system, everything flows from 

 the farm to the city, and then what little is left over, after all the inter- 

 ests and middlemen have taken vv'hat they deem is their share, is per- 

 mitted to come back to the producers on the farm. Even the money 

 and our credits flow to the city, where it is used by these interests, 

 many times in speculative ways, and many of our large city banks have 

 merely become the agents and representatives of these billionaires and 

 their interests, and instead of doing a legitimate banking business of 

 loaning money and extending credit for business purposes, have gone 

 into the underwriting business, where instead of getting an interest on 

 their money, they exact in many cases a Large part of the principal as 

 well. 



I know these are harsh words to utter, but I have been in the banking 

 business in the county where I reside nearly twenty-five years, and have 

 seen one of the most illogical systems of currency and credits in use 

 during that time and when a change was proposed recently by Congress 

 toward introducing a better balanced financial system, these unpatriotic 

 billionaires and their interests have predicted ruin and want through- 

 out our county for fear that the channels of some of their profits they 

 have been exacting from the American people may become stopped up 

 thereby. I am sure that no system could be devised by man that would 

 be more illogical and prejudicial to the common mass of the American 

 people than the system we have been operating under the past forty 

 years, and I say this as one of the many business men who did not sup- 

 port the candidacy of Wilson for president, nor am I a supporter of his 

 administration at the present time, but I want- to give him credit for 

 trying to do something to better the condition of the common mass of 

 the American people. 



Under free trade in meats and grains, I do not see as the producers 

 of meats are any worse off than the producers of all the other natural 



