322 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



was wrong in our affairs ; for while every other industry 

 was being fairly remunerated, we have been steadily 

 going behind, until poverty, if not bankruptcy, stared 

 us in the face. We found that, while we labored harder 

 and more hours than the artisan and workman in other 

 pursuits, we were forced to content ourselves with poorer 

 food and clothing, with fewer social privileges, and less 

 opportunities for mental cultivation than they. We 

 could not help seeing that if they were as steady and 

 industrious as we, they were able to live in better 

 houses, and had more money to .spend in their adorn- 

 ment than we had ; that if they had the taste for such 

 things, as most of them had, they had more pictures, 

 books and newspapers, and more leisure to enjoy them, 

 than we, and that they often indulged in such luxuries 

 as lectures, concerts, excursions, and festivals, while it 

 was rare, indeed, that we could afford to give wife and 

 children one of these treats. Then we began to see 

 that the men who did nothing but handle the products 

 of our labor were still better off, and were getting rich 

 while we were growing poor ; that those who supplied 

 us with the implements for our work added from twenty 

 to fifty per cent, to the original cost, and charged it 

 over to us ; that the merchant and grocer who supplied 

 us with necessaries in their line never forgot their pro- 

 fits ; that the lawyer, who spent half an hour in draw- 

 ing up the mortgage upon our farm, charged us what 

 would be equal to four days of our labor; that to the 

 doctor who came five or six miles into the country to 

 cheer the coming or speed the departing member of our 

 family, we paid the priee of an acre of corn or five 

 days' labor with our team ; that the teacher, for whose 

 education we had paid, earned as much in six hours as 



