THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 77 



keting conditions which have rested upon the Amer- 

 ican farmers during the last ten years that is, in 

 spite of their utmost efforts, the mortgage indebtedness 

 could not be reduced, but on the contrary, has been 

 augmented at an ever-increasing ratio from year to 

 year ; and millionaires would, in Russia, multiply just 

 as they multiplied in our country during the last two 

 decades, But Bolshevism will rejuvenate itself, not 

 to fight with pitchfork and club, but with bayonets 

 and machine guns, and just so sure as our labor and 

 marketing conditions are not changed for the better, 

 an agrarian revolution in America is inevitable. 

 Many think that in the Non-Partisan League they 

 see the beginning of such a revolution, and are alarmed. 

 This revolution would probably be bloodless, but it 

 would sow the seeds of an anarchy worse, if possible, 

 than Bolshevism of to-day. 



The most grave question before the American people 

 is not as to the issues of the great war, but whether 

 or not, when victory is won, personal and property 

 rights, regardless of class, shall be recognized and se- 

 cure in our land. 



As to the profits on increased value of land, every 

 intelligent farmer knows that his acres in virgin soil, 

 still unprofaned by the plow, are more salable, as well 

 as of greater intrinsic value, than those that he has so 

 laboriously and profitlessly tilled, and that the advance 

 in selling price, be it great or small, is not so large but 

 that his equity is more than likely to be wiped out by 

 the first financial depression; just as such equities 

 were wiped out by the thousands during the depression 

 that followed the panics of 1837, 1857, 1873 an d 1893. 



