ADVOCA TE A ND GUIDE. 49 



if I happened to hit the top market. But when I had to sell my finest 

 bunch of fat hogs for $2.90, it put the everlasting quietus on the hog- 

 raising business for me, and I have bought my meat for family use ever 

 since. 



"CASE 4. Corn. Having been taught diversified farming by those 

 interested in the production of cheap food, I thought of course I had to 

 raise corn. After raising a few thousand bushels annually a few years 

 for which I got 12 to 18 cents a bushel, I swore off on corn raising and 

 never planted another grain of it. 



"Diversified farming is based on the theory that one of a dozen differ- 

 ent products might be in luck, and from it the farmer, realize enough to 

 pay his taxes, enabling him to give the other eleven products away. 



"CASE 5. Wheat. Through experience I found I could make a liv- 

 ing by raising wheat exclusively and discontinued all other products. 



"But I observed whenever we had a rain or snow and I planned to 

 pay my children for their help in the field owing to the expected larger 

 yield, that the board of trade beat me to it by selling the price down to 

 offset the expected increased amount. 



"There was no incentive in trying to raise either a larger yield per 

 acre or a better quality, as the board of trade saw to it that I received 

 less money for the crops in such cases. So I rented my farm, moved to 

 town, gave my children a business education to enable them to do some- 

 thing they could get pay for, and advised them to keep out of the farming 

 business until the farmers developed sense enough to unionize and take 

 over the price-fixing and control of their own products to insure reason- 

 able wages and interest on investments. 



"We farmers learned by bitter experience tha the more we raise of 

 any product the less we get for it under present methods of price-fixing. 

 "Hundreds of thousands of us gave up the struggle because we were 

 unwilling to make perpetual slaves of ourselves and families for the bene- 

 fit of Board of Trade gamblers and warehouse manipulator of prices. 



"When the farmers unionize each separate product to insure fair 

 wages and interest on their investment through minimum price-fixing 

 then plenty will be produced for all at fair and reasonable prices. 



"The government should not only permit the farmers to thus union- 

 ize and fix prices but should aid them in doing so for the protection of all 

 from short supplies and exorbitant prices." 





Changing Overproduction Into a Shortage. 



Whether we have a good or poor crop, somebody or or- 

 nization must set the price on it. So far it has never 



