FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 89 



country provided that rate is maintained. Who pays that? It was said 

 in argument before us that didn't much of anybody pay it. Somebody 

 who buys two or three tons of hay, does he pay it? Some farmer who 

 sells a l^w tons of hay, does he pay it? This does not amount to anything. 

 Well, my friends, somebody pays |4,200,000 a year and while it is not 

 possible to put your finger on any individual and say this man pays it 

 or that man pays it, it is possible to say with absolute certainty that 

 ninety per cent of that enormous sum of money is paid by people of the 

 United States who have incomes ranging from |300 to |600 per year. It 

 is paid by the poor people of the United States and it is paid to the 

 rich people of the United States. Right, extremely right and proper if the 

 advance is just, extremely wrong if the advance is unjust. Thirty mil- 

 lions of people are either agriculturists or the families of agriculturists. 

 The greater part of that four millions is paid by the farmers of the 

 United States, and I want to say this further thing, and impress it upon 

 the mind of every farmer before me, that no class suffers from these 

 monopolistic combines like the farmer. If the freight rate is advanced by 

 the railroad, the railway capitalist can well afford to give some of the 

 unreasonable rate to his employee. If the steel trust makes, as it does, $15 

 a ton on every ton of steel rails it sells for $28, it can well afford to 

 give some portion of that extortion to the laborers who manufacture that 

 steel rail. If the anthracite coal combine, as it has, advances the price 

 of anthracite coal 50 cents a ton, it can well afford to give to the miner 

 as it has 10 cents of that advance, keeping 40 cents for itself, $25,000,000 

 a year, five millions to the miner and twenty millions to Wall street. That 

 is the history of the coal combine. 



But the farmer cannot take advantage of any combine for the very 

 nature of his occupation is to prevent monopoly and combine, so I say 

 of all clases the farmer is that man who cannot recoup himself and he is 

 the man who loses most by these monopolies. Bearing these facts in 

 mind, I want to suggest to you one thought which grew out of the 

 investigation which our commission had the other day in Chicago into 

 what is known as the Northwestern Merger, that conbination of railroads 

 which is in all the newspapers and everybody's mouth, and you of all 

 people are that class whose voice and whose influence have got to make 

 this thing right, if it is ever made right. Stretching from the head of 

 Lake Superior 5,500 miles with their branches are two transcontinental 

 railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, and they are the 

 only railroads which operate in the section through which they extend. 

 These two railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern have 

 been combined as one road. These two roads so combined have bought 

 and now operate the Burlington road. Every particle of competition 

 which formerly existed in that whole section which those two roads 

 operate has been obliterated. It has become possible for one single man 

 to fix the freight rate which that whole section shall pay. What was the 

 financial part of this transaction? I think you can understand it. The 

 Northen Pacific and the Great Northern bought the Burlington. They 

 bought it by buying the capital stock of the Burlington, $100,000,000. 

 These two roads paid for it in round numbers $200,000,000. They paid 

 for it by issuing their bonds, the joint bonds of the two roads. In other 

 words they increased the capitalization of those two roads by that trans- 

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