HOW ONE FARMER WAS RUINED 



in this country there was never but one 

 result. 



Therefore, any person that knew the Ameri- 

 can psychology would say at once that there 

 would be farmers' organization after farmers' 

 organization until one should arise powerful 

 enough to cope with these conditions; and 

 any person that knew the history of reform 

 would say as surely that when the revolt came 

 it would be declared to be conducted by bad 

 men. 



For that is the inevitable rule of life. Good 

 men, or those deemed good in the litera- 

 ture of their day, never revolt at anything. 

 Without exception, every social or political 

 reform has been effected by men whose 

 motives and acts were fiercely assailed in 

 their own generation and lauded by all man- 

 kind in the generations thereafter. No man 

 ever attacked a vested wrong and escaped 

 picturing in his own time as a depraved and 

 dangerous person. Sometimes such men have 

 lived to see their innovations embodied in the 

 practices of civilization, and sometimes they 

 have died on dung-hills, but sooner or later 

 the triumph of their ideas has usually come 

 about. 



John Wilkes was pilloried to all England 

 as a monster of wickedness, but every reform 

 he advocated was adopted within a hundred 

 years of his death. William Lloyd Garrison 



187 



