64 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



to the farmer to be unjust in their dealings with 

 him. In the small agricultural communities there 

 was practically no competition. Even where there 

 were several merchants in one town these could, 

 and frequently did, combine to fix prices which the 

 farmer had no alternative but to pay. What irked 

 the farmer most in connection with these "extor- 

 tions " was that the middleman seemed to be a non- 

 producer, a parasite who lived by draining the agri- 

 cultural classes of the wealth which they produced. 

 Even those farmers who recognized the middleman 

 as a necessity had little conception of the intricacy 

 and value of his service. 



Against the manufacturer, too, the farmer had 

 his grievances. He felt that the system of patent 

 rights for farm machinery resulted in unfair prices 

 for was not this same machinery shipped to 

 Europe and there sold for less than the retail price 

 in the United States? Any one could see that the 

 manufacturer must have been making more than 

 reasonable profit on domestic sales. Moreover, 

 there were at this time many abuses of patent 

 rights. Patents about to expire were often ex- 

 tended through political influence or renewed by 

 means of slight changes which were claimed to 

 be improvements. A more serious defect in the 



