THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 357 



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them for one in the public service. If you are wronged 

 in the future do not complain, for you have it in your 

 power to remedy the evil by these combinations ; but 

 let them be for good, mind you, not for evil. Let us 

 combine. I saw a man at our national Congress who 

 said : ' When I left southwestern Georgia I paid a dol- 

 lar a bushel for your prairie corn. I come out here and 

 I find that you are getting twenty cents a bushel for 

 it, and that therefore somebody got eighty cents for 

 fetching it to me. You ought to have half a dollar for 

 that corn, and I ought to get it for seventy-five cents ; 

 and then the fellows who fetch it to us would get twenty- 

 five cents instead of eighty, and that would equalize the 

 thing. I would rather pay seventy-five cents than one 

 dollar, and you never ought to- raise a bushel of corn for 

 less than half a dollar.' And so say I. You never 

 should sell a bushel short of half a dollar, and you can 

 have it the moment you say you will. If your poor 

 neighbors must sell, furnish them the money; make 

 up a purse for them, lend them the money on their 

 cribs and enable them to hold on till the price is up. 

 People cannot eat dry goods and nails; but we can be 

 self-supporting on a farm ; and there is where we have 

 got the advantage, for we can make our farms support 

 us, as we did when I was a boy, when we spun linen 

 and muslin, and made everything we used. They must 

 have our products, and the power to fix a price upon 

 them is in our hands the moment we get ready for it, and 

 that within a year, if we are wise in this matter. First 

 begin by organizing everywhere; not for extortion, not 

 for robbery, but to execute the first law of nature, that 

 of self-protection. Onranize, that we may be strong 

 against the many. While segregated we are weak; 



