162 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



horse falls or a street becomes blocked, and a crowd of uuem- 

 ployed persons increases the blockade. Advertise for a competent 

 person, — man, woman, boy, or girl, on a meagre salar}', and the 

 numerous applicants will show how overwhelmingl}- the occupa- 

 tions of middlemen are overstocked. There are various grades of 

 the great arm}' of the unemployed in any city, but most of them 

 are a standing menace to the general welfare, and many, if not 

 actuall}' criminal, are always on the verge of crime, often by real 

 or fancied necessity. These people have been educated in our 

 schools, — educated to do what they can find no opportunity to do. 

 Deals, trusts, syndicates, stock-gambling, colossal monopolies, 

 lotteries, confidence games, and other so-called business opera- 

 tions, are the natural products of middlemen, using every artifice 

 to beat each other, and make sales, and taking every possible 

 advantage of those who reall}' develop the resources of the 

 country-, — farmers, miners, mechanics, and producers of various 

 kinds. Competition among middlemen may be the life of trade, 

 but it has been death to many a farmer. 



One of the principal causes of the present defensive movement 

 on the part of farmers is middlemen. A million farmers, at least, 

 in the United States, are now organized against middlemen and 

 money-lenders. They say, " We must dispense with a surplus of 

 middlemen, — not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not 

 need them. Their surplus numbers and their exactions diminish 

 our profits." 



Xot only is this surplus of middlemeu a damage to farmers, but 

 to the financial standing and business reputation of the nation. 

 The " Boston Herald," of January 1, 1890, contains a detailed 

 account of the eight million dollars known to have been stolen by 

 about two hundred middlemen, in positions of trust in this countr}' 

 during the j-ear 1889. If those two hundred men had been 

 influenced b}- our system of education to be good farmers, they 

 would have added much to the happiness and prosperity of the 

 country, and the disturbance to business enterprises and the 

 distress to familie,s, resulting from the stealing of eight million 

 dollars, would have been prevented. We never associate these 

 gigantic frauds with farmers, but always with traders. By the 

 prevalence of such frauds we have earned the reputation of being 

 the most fraudulent nation on earth. Our system of education, 

 to begin with, and our hazardous tolerance of practically unre- 



