FARMERS TO THE FRONT 67 



sufficiently compensates you, it is evident that wheat 

 at fifty cents does not. There is no natural or eco- 

 nomic reason for such fluctuations. They have a 

 bad effect in many ways. Who can make any defi- 

 nite calculation on such a basis as this ? Here is the 

 secret of the failure of many farmers to make needed 

 improvements. The owner is afraid to undertake 

 improvements for fear prices will fall, and he may 

 not be able to pay for them. What would you think 

 of a manufacturing business which sold plows this 

 year for fifteen dollars, but which was haunted by 

 the fear that, the cost of production remaining pre- 

 cisely the same, it might have to sell plows next year 

 for seven dollars? The business simply could not 

 go on. It would be impossible for the proprietor to 

 figure on prices, wages or raw material. Profits 

 would be as uncertain and problematical as they now 

 are in the farming business. It is so in farming, 

 which, after all, is manufacturing. The farmer is 

 capitalist, laborer, manufacturer, scientist and land- 

 owner, so that all the forces of production are com- 

 bined in him. The earth is his factory, the plant 

 food his raw material, the plant his machine, and 

 the crop his finished product. Yet, though he is the 

 supreme producer, and though all the forces of pro- 

 duction center in him, he is, under present conditions, 

 the most powerless of all producers, and the only 

 one who takes no account of the cost of production. 

 Is it not time that he asserted himself? He must 

 quit increasing the supply extravagantly and to his 



