442 THE GEOUNDSWELL. 



and equipment for them will be deprived of employment and 

 be forced to become producers. Is that what the farmers 

 want? Capital inevitably shrinks from precarious invest 

 ments. If the farmers wish to utterly destroy the value of 

 American railroad securities in foreign markets, they can 

 not do it more effectually than to demand the abrogation 

 of the privileges that alone make the charters worth hav 

 ing. While hotly charging every grievance upon the rail 

 ways, they forget that the law of supply and demand inva 

 riably regulates the price. Why should the farmers of Iowa 

 boast they have millions of bushels of grain more than they 

 need, and then curse the railways for the low price it com 

 mands ? Have they not produced thus much more than is 

 wanted? Why berate the New England manufacturers 

 because they will not send boots and shoes, cottons and 

 woolens for this surplus, when they only care to exchange 

 for as much as they need. If men will locate so far distant 

 from market that their products are absolutely valueless, 

 and there raise tenfold more than they or the country can 

 consume, even as fuel, they should blame themselves, not 

 the railroads, for their unfortunate predicament. In this 

 respect, the Granges might accomplish some good. Instead 

 of exciting the farmers to rush to the State capitals and 

 demand laws compelling railroad companies to transport 

 produce below actual cost, they might calmly take in the 

 situation and advise their associates to raise only marketa 

 ble products. For, why should a man continually grow 

 corn, when there is no demand for it, simply because his land 

 is adapted for it? 



Every improvement which reduces the cost of transpor 

 tation benefits the producer. The application of the tele 

 graph to railway service enables the companies to do an 

 equal amount of business, with one-third the equipment 



