THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 381 



out to do housework. The servants are of the most in- 

 ferior kind, and even they can't be depended on to stay 

 at the very time they are most wanted. If you make 

 a contract with them in the Spring for the season, and 

 agree to pay them $2 a week and board, when the hot 

 weather comes they begin to grumble, and when the 

 harvest begins they ' can't stand the work any longer,' 

 and the next thing you hear they are binding in the 

 harvest field for a dollar a day while the farmer's wife 

 is left alone with from a dozen to twenty-five harvesters 

 to provide for. These hardships the Colonel attributed 

 largely to the railroads they paid unskilled laborers 

 better wages than the farmers could afford to, and they 

 opened up new country for homesteads for the better 

 class of men who formerly worked out by the month. 

 Though these might be calamities to the large farmers in 

 the older parts of the State, it seemed to me that society 

 had, on'the whole, been benefited by the improvement 

 in the condition of these workingmen, and that if this 

 was the only ground of complaint against the railroad 

 companies, the farmers would get little sympathy. But 

 I am convinced that it is not. 



" Colonel Cochrane's idea in regard to the necessity of 

 making through shipments is a very important one, and 

 in almost every case where I have heard of its having 

 been tried, it has resulted in great saving to the far- 

 mers. A striking instance came to my knowledge 

 recently. I met on the train the owner of the largest 

 cheese factory in the State. During a part of the Spring 

 and early Summer he used 20,000 pounds of milk a 

 day and made 2000 pounds of cheese. That cheese he 

 shipped to New York, paying $1 a hundred pounds for 

 freight, so that he received here at his factory in Wis- 



