CHAPTER V 



the highly instructive story of the 

 "feed wheats" 



OBSERVERS that have any experience 

 in this world's affairs will see easily 

 enough what was the real source of these 

 complaints. 



In the course of years wherein the farmer 

 had been isolated and inarticulate, there had 

 grown up a huge system by which all the 

 normal profits of wheat production were 

 taken by middlemen, and these mostly super- 

 fluous or ornamental. As before noted about 

 such cases, this system had existed so long 

 it amounted to an institution. Custom and 

 habit are great matters. Any wrong can be 

 made, by the persons that get rich from it, to 

 look all but sacred; particularly if it can be 

 shown to have existed more than one genera- 

 tion. Our fathers endured it. Shall we be 

 wiser than they.^ In Lorna Doone the outlaws 

 had lived so long upon the surrounding 

 country they spoke of and believed in their 

 right so to live upon it as inalienable, and 



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