FARMERS TO THE FRONT 13 



pocket. Here is what I mean, it's like this. If we 

 send the price of wheat down too far, the farmer 

 suffers, the fellow who raised it ; if we send it up too 

 far, the poor man in Europe suffers, the fellow who 

 eats it. And food to the peasant on the continent is 

 bread — not meat or potatoes, as it is with us. The 

 only way to do so that neither the American farmer 

 nor the European peasant suffers, is to keep wheat at 

 an average, legitimate value. The moment you in- 

 flate, or depress that, somebody suffers right away, 

 and that is just what these gamblers are doing all the 

 time, booming it up, or booming it down. Think of 

 it : the food of hundreds and hundreds of thousands 

 of people just at the mercy of a few men down there 

 on the board of trade. They make the price. They 

 say just how much the peasant shall pay for his 

 loaf of bread. If he can't pay the price, he simply 

 starves. And as for the farmer, why it's ludicrous. 

 If I build a house and offer it for sale, I put my own 

 price on it, and if the price offered don't suit me I 

 don't sell. But if I go out here in Kansas and raise 

 a crop of wheat, I've got to sell it, whether I want 

 to or not, at the figure named by some fellows in 

 Chicago. And to make themselves rich, they make 

 me sell it at a price that bankrupts me." 



That is a true picture of the actual situation. 

 Farmers sometimes talk as though they believed that 

 this gambling in wheat was a good thing for them, 

 but they forget that what they want is a certain 

 definite and steadily maintained price; not a high 



