110 THE GROUNDS WELL. 



throughout the West and North-west, at which it is estimated 

 that fully two hundred thousand persons assisted. Immense 

 gatherings took place all over Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and 

 Minnesota, chief in importance of which was the one in 

 Livingston County, 111., a county which, from the first, has 

 taken a leading part in the movement. If any doubt had 

 previously existed as to the hold which the movement had 

 popularly secured, the gatherings on the &quot; Farmers Fourth,&quot; 

 as it was known, must have been sufficient to satisfy the 

 veriest Thomas. 



Though Jupiter Pluvius was the reigning deity on the 

 Farmer s Fourth of 1873, he was utterly unable to damp the 

 enthusiasm of the meetings. Not that they were simply 

 merry-makings. Far from it. The farmers were smart 

 ing under a sense of intolerable wrongs, and the seek 

 ing of redress for the past, and insurance against their 

 repetition in the future, formed the principal topics of de 

 bate. However, I am hopeful that better days have dawned, 

 and that, ere long, the fathers of the Farmers Movement 

 will be looked up to with the same veneration as that with 

 which the Revolutionary forefathers were regarded after the 

 liberation of our nation was achieved. Unless i am egre- 

 giously mistaken in the character of the Farmers Move 

 ment, its success is certain, sooner or later. The utmost its 

 enemies can do is to postpone their evil day by dividing 

 the farmers counsels ; but postponement will only make the 

 blow more severe when, at length, it does fall. 



Hereafter, by all means, let the various societies combine 

 and take an annual holiday on the Fourth, when they can 

 join with their wives and children in merry-making, casting 

 aside all business, except the addresses, without which a 

 gathering of this sort would be incomplete. 



