THE FARM LAND 63 



The other force that controlled the direction of American 

 agriculture was government. Government reflects the will of 

 the people. In a democracy it reflects the will of the majority 

 of the people. When the voting power lay with the merchants 

 and large landholders of the eastern seaboard, the government 

 was interested chiefly in selling federal land to raise revenue 

 which would help meet the cost of government. But as the 

 South and its ally, the West, developed and finally came into 

 power under Andrew Jackson, the idea that land should be 

 sold for revenue gave way to the idea that land should be made 

 as cheap as possible. This was the farmer's way of developing 

 government land. The main difficulty was to keep the specula' 

 tors from grabbing most of it. 



By the time of the Civil War, a new and more powerful 

 voice began to shout the farmers down in Congress. This voice 

 came from the banker, the manufacturer, the merchant, and 

 the factory worker. They called for and got the era of high 

 tariff which raised the cost of what the farmer bought, but 

 did not greatly increase the price of what he sold. 



A good idea of the course of the conflict between the farmer 

 and industry in government can be gotten by tracing the fed' 

 eral land policy. A clearer idea of this same conflict can be 

 obtained by tracing the course of the federal money policy. 

 The farmers wanted cheap money. They wanted a mild form 

 of inflation, that is, more money in circulation. The farmers 

 believed that if there were more money in circulation, they 

 would have more money with which to pay their debts. They 

 also wanted laws to make it easier for them to borrow money. 



At the presidential nominating convention of the Demo' 

 cratic party in 1896, William Jennings Bryan stated the far 

 mer's money creed. "You come to us and tell us that the great 

 cities are in favor of the gold standard. We reply that the 

 great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down 



