124 FARMERS UNION AND FEDERATION 



taxes and interest, and often not that. Consequently fac- 

 tories shut down everywhere for want of customers, and 

 labor was thrown out of employment, and free soup houses 

 became the only thing doing an increasing business. 



Not to this day do millions who suffered then know what 

 hit them. The party in power was blamed for it and the 

 people put it out. The panic got worse and it was put back 

 again with no better results. Free silver was blamed and 

 was demonetized. No relief. Protective tariff and tariff 

 for revenue only were both tried with no remedial result. 

 Everything but the real cause were thought of and tried out 

 except the free coinage of silver at 1 6 to 1 . Finally all concluded 

 it was caused by overproduction of factory goods. Couldn't 

 anyone see the warehouses were full of them and none com- 

 ing to buy? But that was only an effect, not the cause. 

 Couldn't all see that the farmers needed and could use all 

 those goods and many times more had they money to buy 

 them? 



Overproduction of farm products came first, as it will 

 again, through the present plans of opening up at government 

 expense vast areas of virgin land for free homesteads for the 

 millions of returning soldiers in this and other countries. 



Take for instance, Saskatchewan, one of the great unde- 

 veloped agricultural Provinces of Canada, and consider its 

 possibilities alone when brought under full cultivation by 

 the returning soldiers as is being planned. It is larger than 

 Austria-Hungary by 11,244 square miles ; than Germany by 

 42,920 square miles; France by 44,624 square miles; and 

 Denmark, Holland and Belgium together by 212,524 square 

 miles. It contains 251,700 square miles, 161,088,000 acres, 

 and has yet available for homesteads for soldiers 4,900,000 

 acres. A total of 20,643,863 acres have been granted to 

 railway companies, the Hudson's Bay Company and school 

 endowments. Here follows a news item telling how a rail- 

 road is going to dispose of its grant after a discussion on 

 what to do with the returning Canadian soldiers : 



