THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 365 



for the purpose of buying coal. It purchased just a 

 ton, and he spent a day with his team in hauling. One 

 year I raised 3600 bushels of wheat, and kept a careful 

 account of its cost. When I sold it, and balanced my 

 books, I found that I had for my own labor, which I 

 had not charged, and that of my wife, who had a terri- 

 bly hard time of it cooking for harvesters and threshers 

 during the hot weather of midsummer, just $300 ! 

 Why, sir, $1000 would not have paid for that summer's 

 work. Wheat is so uncertain a crop, it has so many 

 enemies from the time it is sown until it is threshed, 

 and it is so exacting of the farmer who must attend to 

 it at certain time, or he will lose it, that we can't afford 

 to raise it for less than ninety cents a bushel. 



" ' Now there is something wrong in all this. With 

 our productive soil, and facilities for reaching market, 

 the farmers of Illinois ought to be fore-handed, comfort- 

 ably housed and clothed, and able to save a little every 

 year, instead of getting deeper and deeper into debt. 

 We are an intelligent, hard-working, economical people, 

 and every one of us who owns his farm is to that ex- 

 tent a capitalist j and we ought to be able to do as well 

 as the journeyman mechanic, with less education than 

 we and no capital. It is not right that the Chicago, 

 Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which only moves our 

 crop to Chicago, a distance of 132 miles, and the trade 

 in that city who handles it, should be growing enor- 

 mously rich, while we are growing poorer. It is not 

 worth eleven cents a bushel to take our corn from here 

 to Chicago, and the railroad that is charging it is rob- 

 bing us of a part of the fruits of our labor.' 



" ' Mr. Walker, the President of this road, told me 

 that railroad property in Illinois was not profitable, 



