HOW ONE FARMER WAS RUINED 



They waited a little to see if the market, now 

 manipulated downward, might next be ma- 

 nipulated upward again. No such change ap- 

 peared, and they gave up and were sold out, 

 going forth from their farm with scarcely the 

 price of a sandwich between them. 



The older of the brothers was Arthur C. 

 Townley, a native of Minnesota, where he 

 had been reared on a farm and taught in the 

 local high-school. He had traveled widely and 

 observed much, sometimes as a land-seeker, 

 sometimes as a journeyman plasterer, for he 

 had managed somehow to pick up that trade 

 with other branches of human knowledge. 

 Farming he knew, probably as well as any 

 one that followed it — scientific and practical 

 farming. From the beginning he had been 

 on conviction enlisted against the various In- 

 terests that found the conditions I have de- 

 scribed the source of their profits. At one 

 time he had joined the Socialist party as an 

 available means of protest, and had been a 

 speaker in its service, but, accumulating a 

 disgust for its methods and a wise prevision 

 of its futility, had left it. 



He was now ruined by a manipulated mar- 

 ket and sat himself down to consider why the 

 ruin and what could be done about such dis- 

 asters. Thousands of other farmers had been 

 ruined in the same way; under the existing 

 conditions still other thousands would walk 



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