THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 319 



I told them so. But we have learned differently, for 

 when our farmers have combined and offered freight in 

 large quantities to the railroad companies, they have 

 refused to give us the advantages which they give to 

 the favorites. 



" The terms of these contracts are secret. But we 

 know that they must be considerable, or these men who 

 have them could not make so much money. You see 

 what this kind of railroad management amounts to. 

 The company comes in and says : l You shall sell your 

 corn to a certain man and for a certain price, which we 

 will fix.' That's one thing we complain of, and we will 

 not long submit to it. But I haven't told you all. In 

 certain cases the roads have fixed the rates of freight 

 very high, and then men have appeared among the 

 farmers, offering to buy our produce at prices just a 

 shade higher than what it would net us to ship it our- 

 selves, but at rates much below what it ought to bring 

 us. We have often suspected that those men were the 

 agents of the railroad companies or of the railroad 

 managers. If our suspicions were correct, you see 

 what an outrage upon the farmers it was. The rail- 

 road people knowing our necessities, and that many of 

 us are obliged to sell, even at a loss, for the purpose of 

 obtaining money, first arbitrarily fix the price of our 

 produce and then force us to sell to them. 



" Nor are these discriminations confined to our ship- 

 ments cast. They discriminate in favor of certain men 

 ia bringing freight westward, and in that way force us 

 to trade with those men. Take salt, for instance, and 

 let an association of farmers and a local trader purchase 

 the eamc amount at the same price in Chicago. When 

 that salt is in Iowa, the local trader, if there is strong 



