FARMERS TO THE FRONT 35 



garden. They have endured loneliness, hardship, 

 severe toil, privation and hunger, in order that 

 others might be fed. Our export trade, of which 

 we boast so much, and which has indeed attained 

 tremendous proportions, has been swelled by the 

 fruits of the labors of the husbandman. The fac- 

 tory, the railroad and the mine all live off the farm. 

 We talk of labor as the source of all wealth, and so 

 it is — but it is the labor of the farmer. And yet we 

 find that, after all these years these men on the firing 

 line of our American civilization, who should be the 

 most independent men in the world, are dependent 

 on the captains of industry, the promoter, the under- 

 writer, the labor leader, and the grain gambler. It 

 is time to end this dependence. And unless the 

 American farmer rouses himself, he will have to al- 

 ways be content to have his business controlled by 

 others, to be called a "jay" a "rube" or "hayseed," 

 and to see himself caricatured in the comic papers 

 and on the stage as the ridiculous victim of the 

 gold-brick swindler and the hay-fork note pedler, 

 and indeed no gold-brick swindle was ever so palpa- 

 ble as that which is inherent in our present indus- 

 trial organization. The Third Power can end it 

 when it becomes a real power. 



