282 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL. 



factory. In this way is brought about what the political wiseacres call 

 an over-production, which is in fact under-consumption. There is an 

 over-production of too many farmers, laborers, manufacturers, profes- 

 sional men, merchants, railroads ; in fact, too many of everybody. There 

 are particularly too many fools who vote to keep up such a system of 

 government, which obstructs trade and progress, and brings poverty and 

 distress upon the whole land. 



Then, again, when the farmer sends his surplus to market the rail- 

 roads lie in wait for him. In effecting his exchange he must use this 

 great public highway, and he finds that what should be a public blessing 

 is turned into an engine of oppression, and that all the benefits growing 

 out of this great invention are given to the large corporations, which are 

 enabled to rob the people through special privileges granted by laws 

 passed by a Congress whose election has been secured by the free use 

 of money wrung from the people by the charge upon watered stock. 



Another cause of poverty among the farmers is our system of indirect 

 taxation. Under this system a man is taxed on what he spends, and as 

 the average income of the Western farmer is not more than $500 per 

 annum, he spends at least $350 of this to support his family. One-third 

 of this is taken from him by indirect taxation, or in bounties to capital- 

 ists or rich corporations. The balance of his income is used up in 

 paying State and municipal taxes. To cover this loss that falls upon him 

 from year to year, he is forced to take out a mortgage on his farm. 

 Then it is that he falls a prey to the grandest robber of them all, the 

 loan agent or shark, who demands upon a mortgage of $500, in some 

 instances, as high as twenty per cent for securing the loan, and from 

 ten to fifteen -per cent for insuring the small buildings on the farm, and 

 then raises doubts about the claimant's right to prove up on it at the 

 land-office, and extracts ten or fifteen per cent for securing the poor 

 settler's title to the land upon which he has lived and worked hard for 

 over five years, in accordance with the homestead law. 



The farmer, of course, demurs at this exaction; but the time has 

 come when he must buy improved machinery, and pay debts previously 

 contracted, and the government fees at the land-office before he can 

 prove up. He and his wife, fearing that they must give up the fruits of 

 their labor and struggles to build up a new home, sign the papers, and, 

 after the Shylock's exactions, receive from two to three hundred dollars 

 out of the $500 twelve per cent mortgage, and divide the balance of 

 the swag between the loan agent and the banker, who sells the mortgage, 

 knowing how it has been obtained, to his neighbors, friends, or kinsmen 

 in the East, for the full face of the mortgage, and swaggers around town 



