FARMERS TO THE FRONT 33 



customers to pay it. Feeling that the price was too 

 high, some farmers recently tried to buy threshers 

 and thresh their own grain, but they were told by 

 the manufacturers that they would sell machines 

 only to members of the threshers' association. Thus 

 the farmer is confronted, not only by the threshers' 

 association, but by a partial combination between 

 that and the threshing machine manufacturers. 

 Again it is a case of the organized against the un- 

 organized, and, as always happens, the unorganized 

 lose. They must lose. The farmers pay prices fixed 

 by others, and they sell at prices fixed by others. 

 There is neither equity nor common sense in this, 

 but they are slaves to the system and will be until 

 they can pass it along. 



So the appeal is to the Third Power to become a 

 real power, to the end that it may make itself felt 

 for the good of all the people. If it is right for the 

 thresher to say what he will charge for threshing the 

 farmer's wheat, it is right for the farmer to say 

 what he will charge for his wheat. It is at least not 

 equity for the farmer both to buy and sell at prices 

 made by others. If we admit that it is right for 

 those who sell to the farmer to fix the prices at 

 which they sell, and we don't dispute it, we must 

 also admit that it is right for the farmer to fix the 

 prices at which others shall buy from him. But 

 really it is not a question of right at all — it is a ques- 

 tion of power. If the farmer is to free himself from 

 the compulsion to which he is now subjected, he 



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