HOW ONE FARMER WAS RUINED 



They waited a little to see if the market, now 

 manipulated downward, might next be ma- 

 nipulated upward again. Xo such change ap- 

 peared, and they gave up and were sold out, 

 going forth from their farm with scarcely the 

 price of a sandwich between them. 



The older of the brothers was Arthur C. 

 Townley, a native of Minnesota, where he 

 had been reared on a farm and taught in the 

 local high-school. He had traveled widely and 

 observed much, sometimes as a land-seeker, 

 sometimes as a journeyman plasterer, for he 

 had managed somehow to pick up that trade 

 with other branches of human knowledge. 

 Farming he knew, probably as well as any 

 one that followed it scientific and practical 

 farming. From the beginning he had been 

 on conviction enlisted against the various In- 

 terests that found the conditions I have de- 

 scribed the source of their profits. At one 

 time he had joined the Socialist party as an 

 available means of protest, and had been a 

 speaker in its service, but, accumulating a 

 disgust for its methods and a wise prevision 

 of its futility, had left it. 



He was now ruined by a manipulated mar- 

 ket and sat himself down to consider why the 

 ruin and what could be done about such dis- 

 asters. Thousands of other farmers had been 

 ruined in the same way; under the existing 

 conditions still other thousands would walk 



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