20 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



districts of the country the farmers commonly 

 bought their supplies and implements on credit or 

 mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits 

 at best were so slight that one bad season might put 

 them thereafter entirely in the power of their credi- 

 tors and force them to sell their crops on their credi- 

 tors' terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged, 

 too, at rates of interest that ate up the farmers' 

 profits. During and after the Civil War the fluc- 

 tuation of the currency and the high tariff worked 

 especial hardship on the farmers as producers of 

 staples which must be sold abroad in competition 

 with European products and as consumers of manu- 

 factured articles which must be bought at home 

 at prices made arbitrarily high by the protective 

 tariff. In earlier times, farmers thus harassed 

 would have struck their tents and moved farther 

 west, taking up desirable land on the frontier and 

 starting out in a fresh field of opportunity. It was 

 still possible for farmers to go west, and many did 

 so but only to find that the opportunity for eco- 

 nomic independence on the edge of settlement had 

 largely disappeared. The era of the self-sufficing 

 pioneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer 

 on the frontier, forced by natural conditions over 

 which he had no control to engage in the production 



