HOW ONE FARMER WAS RUINED 



led a revolt against the settled institutions 

 of his day; monstrous stories of immorality 

 were invented against him; some of them 

 stuck for years after his death and long pre- 

 vented the just recognition of his services. 

 Charles Sumner underwent the same fate; 

 there has been even within a year a recru- 

 descence of the lies that clouded his fame. The 

 Populists were hooted and jeered from one 

 end of the country to the other; most of 

 them lived to see most of their doctrines 

 adopted by the great political parties. In 

 England the Chartists were hunted down and 

 imprisoned; almost the whole Chartist pro- 

 gram has since been made into English law. 



In whatsoever manner or in whatsoever 

 form of organization the Northwestern farmers 

 might have revolted, so soon as their revolting 

 movement attained to proportions that threat- 

 ened intrenched Privilege, it would have been 

 assailed on moral grounds. Men in great 

 numbers that freely admitted the basic justice 

 of the farmers' cause would have vehemently 

 decried the tactics that the farmers pursued. 

 Whatever these might be, they should have 

 been something else. Exactly as men say they 

 are in favor of the right of workers to organize, 

 but are opposed to the unions, so in regard to 

 the farmers similar minds would say they knew 

 the farmers had been badly treated, but this 

 was not the way to redress their wrongs. If 



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