32 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



be naturally made to wholesale trade, and in speeches to 

 farmers I told them so. But we have learned differently, 

 for when our farmers have combined and offered freight in 

 large quantities to the railroad companies, they have refused 

 to give us the advantages which they give the favorites. 

 The terms of these contracts are secret. But we know 

 that they must be considerable, or these men who have 

 them could not make so much money. You see what this 

 kind of railroad management amounts to. The company 

 comes in and says : ' You shall sell your grain to a certain 

 man and fora certain price, which we will fix.' That's 

 one thing we complain of, and we will not long submit to 

 it. But I have not told you all. In certain cases the roads 

 have fixed the rates of freight very high, and then men 

 have appeared among farmers, offering to buy our produce 

 at prices just a shade higher than it would net us to ship 

 it ourselves, but at rates much below what it ought to 

 bring us. We have often supposed that these men were 

 the agents of the railroad companies or of the railroad 

 managers. If our suspicions were correct, you see what 

 an outrage on the farmers it was. 



u The railroad people knowing our necessities, and 

 that many of us are obliged to sell, even at a loss, for the 

 purpose of obtaining money, first arbitrarily fix the price 

 of our produce and then force us to sell to them. 



* ' Nor are these discriminations confined to our ship- 

 ments East. They discriminate in favor of certain men in 

 bringing freight westward, and in that way force us to 

 trade with those men. Take salt, for instance, and let an 

 association of farmers and a local trader purchase the same 

 amount at the same price in Chicago. When that salt is 

 in Iowa, the local trader, if there is strong competition, 

 will retail it to the farmers cheaper than what their own 

 cost them with the freight added. Now there must be 

 some cat in the meal (or salt). It may be that in some 



