STORY OF THE "FEED WHEATS" 



line to snatch from the bushel as it passed. 

 All along that line it was one story of loss. 

 The farmer lost when he borrowed money 

 at exorbitant rates, when he sold his wheat 

 on fictitious grades fixed against him by a 

 power over which he had no control, when 

 he was docked for impurities that did not 

 exist, when his wheat was hawked about the 

 Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce by para- 

 sitical or phantom handlers and unnecessary 

 brokers, when it went to a mixing-house to 

 be hocused and doctored, when it was hauled 

 at extravagant rates by waterlogged railroads, 

 when he was charged for switching that was 

 never done and sales that were never made. 

 And all this supported and buttressed by huge 

 organizations, the huge bank, the huge finan- 

 cial interest, the huge railroad company, the 

 huge milling concern, the wealth, power, poli- 

 tics, social organization of the entire North- 

 west in one solid enduring league. 



Apparently, you might as well go forth to 

 fight ocean tides. Yet there was one little 

 comment almost any man might have made 

 on this that would have greatly changed its 

 aspect. I have often marveled that it never 

 seems to occur to gentlemen engaged in the 

 alluring but dangerous excitements of profit- 

 eering. It is that when, on this continent, 

 at least, great masses of men long submit 

 with the fatalistic calm of the Orient to con- 



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