352 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



on the cost of production. Thus that combination 

 makes a monopoly of the plow business. No matter 

 what agent or manufacturer you buy of you have to 

 pay the same per cent. There are, my friends, the pork- 

 packers, from all the principal cities in this Union, who 

 last year met and combined to fix the price of pork 

 you know this as well as I. St. Louis, Milwaukee, 

 Chicago, Louisville, and Cincinnati came together just 

 as they are going to convene next week at Cincinnati, 

 and fixed the price of our pork for the coming year just 

 as coolly as the master sold the slave or the products 

 of his labor. Last year they fixed the price upon your 

 pork at $4 a hundred live weight, and they would buy 

 all there is in the West at the same rate. Of course 

 they got it, and if they had fixed the price at $5 they 

 would have had it. I only got $3.25. Probably the 

 high price for freight made the difference in your case. 

 What right had they to do this ? 



" Certain people denounce me because I use strong 

 language. Colonel Coleman called these pork men 

 scoundrels, and I believe it's a good word, for the man 

 who robs me is a scoundrel. They combined to rob us. 

 The scoundrels came together and fixed their price, and 

 the pork began coming in. The men who were in debt, 

 and whose notes for these reapers and mowers had 

 matured, sold first, and when they were through the 

 stream stopped. It costs as much to run a packing- 

 house on half time as it does for whole time, and as the 

 pork did not come in they put the price up forty cents 

 a hundred, and that started the stream again ; and the 

 next set of men whose notes for reapers and corn- 

 planters had matured sent in another lot. When that 

 was worked up the pork-packers put up the price 



