FARMERS' EXCHANGE COLLAPSES 



trampled over them and left them crushed 

 and ruined. 



One of these enterprises was the Minnesota 

 Farmers' Exchange, incorporated in 1903. 

 A handful of farmers in Clay County, Minne- 

 sota, was in this situation that each of them 

 had drudged away the better part of his life, 

 arising early and laboring late, to face at last 

 the fact that now, past the middle term of 

 life, he had nothing to show for it all ex- 

 cept his two hands and the stretch of prairie 

 soil with which he had started. The annual 

 disappointment, it is to be supposed, had 

 become too much — every year planting the 

 seed, rearing the harvest in hope and selling 

 it, as if on a careful calculation, for just so 

 much as would keep the family alive. They 

 read the papers; they knew what dazzling 

 fortunes other men made out of the farmers' 

 toil while they that toiled won for themselves 

 nothing but life on its hardest terms. They 

 had children growing up around them, and 

 for these the only promise was a similar life 

 of hardship and toil for the building of other 

 men's fortunes. 



Day after day they read in their newspapers 



reports of the markets upon which were based 



the prices they received for their produce, and 



could not fail to be instructed by the reading — 



accounts like this, of a day on the Minneapolis 



Chamber of Commerce, for instance : 



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