FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 93 



which it may regulate the charges, overcapitalization in corporations of 

 that sort means unjust taxes. 



It was said by a lawyer that no man dared to invest a dollar in railroad 

 stocks. There is a glimmering of truth in his suggestion, but why? Is 

 it for the reason which he intimated? That people fear the government 

 may unjustly interfere with the government of these railroads? It is 

 because you do not know what speculator will buy up that railroad 

 tomorrow and wreck it for his own purposes. It would be interesting to 

 know how many miles of railroad in this country honestly built and 

 honestly operated, have gone into the hands of a receiver. Railway 

 stocks do not today pay a return and are not today worth par. I could 

 not find a better illustration of my proposition than the Great Northern 

 Railroad itself. There is a railroad stretching from the Mississippi to 

 Puget Sound. It never received a dollar of government aid. There 

 stands against it today no penny of bonded indebtedness. It was built 

 out of its capital stock alone, and never did that stock fall to par and 

 never did it pass a dividend. All honor to that sort of an enterprise. 

 All honor to the man who conceives that sort of enterprise. No property 

 the American people can hold is more secure than that property. 



Just south of it is the illustration of another side. Built with govern- 

 ment aid, the pet of speculators, a little bit more cost but practically the 

 same. Its capitalization is not 98 millions like the Great Northern, but 

 327 millions 314 times as much. 



When J. J. Hill in the vigor of his days was pushing his great railroad 

 to the Pacific coast, he was in truth a captain of industry. In his 

 maturer years he has fallen into bad associations. He has gotten into 

 Wall street. They have taught him that the easiest way to possess wealth 

 is to get money not make money. He is engaged in the attempt to create 

 1150,000,000 out of nothing. My friends, that he cannot do. No one 

 ever yet did, ever yet created something out of nothing. If he gives per- 

 manent value to his $150,000,000, it is because you and I and our descend- 

 ants pay it in unjust transportation charges. 



AGRICULTURE AND THE HOME MARKET. 



PROF. E. D. JONES^ ANN ARBOR. 



I wish to introduce my subject by a quotation. It is taken from the 

 writing of Wm. Gregg, an early promoter of manufacturing in South 

 Carolina, and it dates from 1845, a time when the south was exclusively 

 agricultural. It is as follows: 



"Agriculture, to flourish, must have a market for its surplus produc- 

 tions. And what is a market? Does that magic word reside in any place? 

 Most people seem to think so. A market is everywhere. It is people, not 

 a place — people not engaged in agriculture but employed in the produc- 

 tion of something which supplies a human want. And the nearer it 

 is found to the farmer's door the better, the less of his productions are 

 spent in getting them to market. Agriculture can flourish then only 



