19*3 



PREFACE 



world never knew before. The farmer power is the 

 third power to assert itself, but will be the first power 

 in strength and importance. 



The bestirring and awakening of this last and great- 

 est power is the most significant event of the present 

 generation. No individual, no matter what his posi- 

 tion — professional, industrial or political — can afford 

 to ignore its birth and make calculations on its rise. 

 For, while it is not a power that will contest for mas- 

 tery by brute force in the 'fields economic or politic, it 

 will affect all in its demands for equity and the equal 

 rights of man. 



The entrance of the American Society of Equity 

 into the economic problems of the world, through 

 which the Third Power will rise, marks an epoch. The 

 awakening of the agricultural classes, the organiza- 

 tion of them into national and international coopera- 

 tive bodies, which is now being accomplished, will re- 

 move agriculture from the list of uncertain industries 

 and place it on a basis of certainty for prices equal to 

 that enjoyed by the best regulated manufacturing or 

 commercial enterprises. 



The undertaking is great, but since the correct plan 

 has been evolved, the desirable ends, in the ordinary 

 evolution of the times, will work out as surely as the 

 fruit follows the flower. The revolution that will take 

 place in prevailing customs and laws might appal us 

 if it was not for the fact that, in the working out of 

 this stupendous movement everything will be toward 



