ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 35 



The present effort at price-setting on farm products by a 

 city paper is utterly useless. Only by a national union of 

 all producers of each product separately, and operated on 

 the same plans as city labor unions, can they succeed in 

 raising and maintaining their wages and interest on invest- 

 ment. And only by this increase can smaller farms be made 

 possible and rural population made to keep pace with the 

 urban. 



Will it pay you wheat growers to unionize to make it 

 possible for a small farm to make a living and a modernized 

 home for a family so you can divide up your big wheat 

 farm among your children as they marry and desire homes 

 of their own? That is the only way to keep them from 

 moving to the city for employment. 



Defense Against Unionized or Predatory Capital. 



Under this caption I shall take the opportunity to sound 

 a warning that it is within the possibilities of the compara- 

 tively near future when unionized or predatory capital will 

 take over the 1 wheat-producing business out of individual 

 hands as it did manufacturing, transportation, communica- 

 tion, butchering, and many other industries carried on once 

 by individual owners. That it has not been done is because 

 more could be made by speculating in wheat than in raising 

 it, or in other business. However, it is being done now on 

 a small experimental scale. 



In this and other countries large tracts of cheap wheat 

 land is being bought up and managers put on them. By 

 using great tractors and other wheat-farming machinery, 

 and the cheapest of unorganized seasonal labor, with no 

 improvements to make or families to keep the year round on 

 the land, they can make expenses and good interest on a 

 much lower wheat price than can be done on individual 

 small farms. This is competition wheat that the wheat 

 growers' union should use their political power to put out of 



