THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF EQUITY. 



A Plan for Cooperation by Farmers to Secure Profitable 

 Prices for all Farm Products. 



"Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take 

 for granted, but to weigh and consider." — Bacon. 



The machine must not belittle the engine that drives it, nor 

 the engine the steam that propels it. Oftentimes as people 

 look at the machines and note the great work they are doing, 

 they do not think of the steam away back, which makes the 

 machine useful. The farmer furnishes the steam for all the 

 business in the country. He sows, he tills, he harvests, but 

 if he would stop there the business of the country would be 

 crippled. He must market, when all the machinery starts. 

 The products of the farm flow like life blood through all the 

 arteries of trade and give life to the whole body. 



The farmer creates most of the wealth. Surely what he 

 creates makes all wealth possible. He feeds them all and 

 clothes them all ; and he can starve them all. Yet he has, in 

 the past, been the most helpless and dependent of all. The 

 people who create wealth should enjoy many of its blessings. 



Farmers are doing many things now because it has been 

 the custom in the past. Merchants and manufacturers did 

 the same way a few years ago, but they are changing their 

 methods. The farmer may be the last one to get out of the 

 rut, but the time has arrived for action. Progress, improve- 

 ment, new methods, benefit farmers as well as other classes 

 of business men. 



The cost to produce a bushel of grain one year is about 

 the same as another, yet one year it may bring the producer 

 fifty cents a bushel or less and another one dollar or more. 

 Who can make any definite calculations on such an uncertain 

 basis as this? Here is the secret of lack of improvements 



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