THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 349 



my boys was something like this : Speaking of the 

 magnitude of this movement, how chronic the wrong 

 was we suffered from, and how this evil that we had 

 no voice in fixing a price upon our labor had come 

 down to us from the feudal ages, I said I did not ex- 

 pect to live to see the full fruition of my hopes in this 

 country, but that I would bequeath the fight to my 

 boys with the injunction that they should never leave 

 it until all their rights under our Constitution and laws 

 were guaranteed to them, and they had secured the 

 dearest of all rights to an American freeman that of 

 fixing the price upon their own labor. That is the 

 connection in which I mentioned my boys and no other. 

 I did say that when I was a boy we used to shoot 

 crows and hang them up on a pole in the corn-field as 

 a terror to evil-doers [laughter], and I said perhaps the 

 time might come when, if every other remedy failed, we 

 might hang some men about the country in that same 

 way as a terror to evil-doers ; but I believed the remedy 

 for all the evils of which we complained was the peace- 

 ful remedy of the ballot-box. That is the language 

 which has been so tortured, and this is enough on that 

 point. I have, however, this comforting reflection in 

 regard to all tjjat has been said and all the flings at 

 me in relation to that speech, that if you want to find 

 where the best apples are, go into the orchard and 

 look for the tree under which you will find the most 

 clubs. There is no mistake about that rule. 



" Whence comes this wrong the fact that, notwith- 

 standing all this immense production of all the necessa- 

 ries of human life, our farms are still under mortgage ? 

 Take another fact and put it with this one that a 

 careful estimate made in 1866, when we were nearer 



