HINDRANCES 49 



rected, sending joy, happiness and good cheer to 

 the afflicted and distressed. 



You can scarcely lay your finger upon a single 

 enterprise of any kind or character in any com- 

 munity, but what has been promoted by the so- 

 called middleman, and pushed to completion, or 

 continued in operation by his money, his brains, 

 and enterprise. Entirely to eliminate him from 

 our business economy is but the fancied dream 

 of the scheming politician, promulgated to keep 

 him in power. The thoughtful man knows that 

 the sensible thing to do is to eliminate the evils 

 that have crept into the middle class, and 

 promulgate the things that will so bring to- 

 gether the producer, the middleman and the 

 consumer, that the producer and the middleman 

 can live and prosper, and the consumer will pur- 

 chase his products that will eliminate the high 

 cost of living and put us all upon the plane of 

 better living. 



That there are too many middlemen there is no 

 question. Fifty years ago twelve out of every 

 fifteen people in the United States engaged in 

 agriculture. Now, out of every four of our popu- 

 lation, three are living in the city and are not 

 producers. Yet if you will take a census of the 

 so-called middlemen it will show just as we have 

 already stated that they were mainly recruited 

 from the ranks of the producers or from the farm, 

 and the very reason they joined the ranks of the 

 middle class was that Uhey were seeking to better 

 their condition. If those things had been done 

 that would have made farm life more profitable 

 and better, and improved the opportunities 



