554 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



BUSINESS RELATIONS 



4. For our business interests, we desire to bring producers 

 and consumers, farmers and manufacturers into the most direct 

 and friendly relations possible. Hence, we must dispense with 

 a surplus of middlemen, not that we are unfriendly to them, 

 but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions 

 diminish our profits. 



We wage no aggressive warfare against any other interests 

 whatever. On the contrary, all our acts and all our efforts, 

 so far as business is concerned, are not only for the benefit of 

 the producer and consumer, but also for all other interests 

 that tend to bring these two parties into speedy and economical 

 contact. Hence, we hold that transportation companies of 

 every kind are necessary to our success, that their interests 

 are intimately connected with our interests, and harmonious 

 action is mutually advantageous, keeping in view the first sen- 

 tence in our declaration of principles of action, that ' ' individual 

 happiness depends upon general prosperity." 



We shall, therefore, advocate for every state the increase in 

 every practicable way of all facilities for transporting cheaply 

 to the seaboard, or between home producers and consumers 

 all the productions of our country. We adopt it as our fixed 

 purpose to "open out the channels in nature's great arteries, 

 that the life-blood of commerce may flow freely." 



We are not enemies of railroads, navigable and irrigating 

 canals, nor of any corporation that will advance our industrial 

 interests nor of any laboring classes. 



In our noble Order there is no communism, no agrarianism. 



We are opposed to such spirit and management of any corpo- 

 ration or enterprise as tends to oppress the people and rob them 

 of their just rights. We are not enemies to capital, but we 

 oppose the tyranny of monopolies. We long to see the antagon- 

 ism between capital and labor removed by common consent, and 

 by an enlightened statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. We are opposed to excessive salaries, high rates of inter- 

 est, and exorbitant profits in trade. They greatly increase our 

 burdens, and do not bear a proper proportion to the profits 

 of producers. We desire only self-protection, and the protec- 



