34 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



than we had; that if they had the taste for such things, as 

 most of them had, they had more pictures, books and 

 newspapers and more leisure to enjoy them, than we, and 

 that they often indulged in such luxuries as lectures, con- 

 certs, excursions, and festivals, while it was rare, indeed, 

 that we could afford to give wife ^nd children one of these 

 treats. Then we began to see that the men who did 

 nothing but handle the products of our labor were still 

 better off, and were getting rich while we were growing 

 poor; that those who supplied us with the implements for 

 our work added from twenty to fifty per cent, to the 

 original cost, and charged it over to us; that the merchant 

 and grocer who supplied us with necessaries in their line 

 never forgot their profits; that the lawyer, who spent half 

 an hour in drawing up the mortgage on our farm, charged 

 us what would be equal to four days of our labor; that to 

 the doctor who came five or six miles into the country to 

 cheer the coming or speed the departing member of our 

 family, we paid the price of an acre of corn or five days 

 labor with our team ; that the teacher, for whose education 

 we had paid, earned as much in six hours as we could in 

 six days of sixteen hours each; and so on through all the 

 branches of trade, professions or productions, we found all 

 getting a fair, and some an exorbitant, profit on their 

 commodities and services with which our own would bear 

 no comparison." 



u ls it any wonder," says the New York Tribune 

 commenting upon this declaration, "that the men who 

 turned from their hard labor and profitless crops to see 

 these features of their surroundings should put up the cry, 

 'There's something wrong about all this'? And the story 

 is not much exaggerated; from the farmer's point of view 

 not at all, but on the contrary, very mildly stated. You 

 may say some of these things that seem so unjust are but 

 the natural and inevitable accompaniments of the profession 



