HOW ONE FARMER WAS RUINED 



be full, or he must be an insatiable cormorant. 

 Very few of the persons that cling to this 

 belief would be willing to undertake the farm- 

 er's career for themselves, and probably not 

 one would care to sustain life on the average 

 farmer's margin, but this never discourages 

 the genial faith in abounding rural prosperity. 

 But all the time the truth remained, and 

 everybody that cared enough for it might 

 easily so find it, that the farmer alone, of all 

 classes in the community, must sell always 

 in a wholesale and buy always in a retail 

 market, and therefore, when the retail market 

 was unreasonably raised, as from 1914 to 1919, 

 he necessarily must suffer most. But this 

 was only the beginning of the Northwestern 

 farmer's evil lot. It must be apparent from 

 what has gone before that this farmer must 

 sell his product to a great and wonderful or- 

 ganization designed to make his selling price 

 low and equipped with almost unlimited power 

 to that end; and he must buy whatever lie 

 bought from great and wonderful organiza- 

 tions designed to make his buying price high 

 and equipped with almost unlimited power 

 to that end. A farmer confronted with these 

 vast forces was in a state so utterly impotent 

 that he seemed like a figure of fun. A straw 

 in a cyclone, a cockle-shell in a tidal wave, a 

 leaf tossed over Niagara would have as much 

 chance. The crude illustration that was so 



185 



