LABOR'S WRONGS. 35 



of agriculture; that men take up and follow farming 

 knowing all its disadvantages and risks of the business; 

 that they go into it with their eyes open, and that even 

 with these drawbacks the business is overdone, and low 

 prices are brought about by over-production. But with all 

 that, you do not remove or explain the patent injustice 

 which always stares the farmer in the face, that all his 

 neighbors in other pursuits and occupations are getting 

 rich and living in comfort upon the profits of his business 

 and his labor. For many of the discomforts and privations 

 of their lot there are compensations, of course. They do 

 not deny this, though they could hardly be expected to 

 enumerate them in the recital of their complaints, for they 

 belong to the other side of the case. On the other side of 

 the case, too, are considerations that pertain to the kind of 

 crops they raise, whether they could not make their busi- 

 ness more profitable by the exercise of sounder judgment 

 in the choice of crops to be produced, and other similar 

 suggestions. But underlying all this is a grievance actual 

 and tangible, and that is their present and immediate 

 objective point, to-wit: The absolute power over them and 

 their business of the railroad corporations which have been 

 created by their votes. They have seen the railroads 

 discriminating against them in freight tarifis and paying 

 no heed to remonstrance or protest. They have appealed 

 to Legislatures and Courts, and found themselves met with 

 the money and power of great moneyed corporations; and 

 finally they have betaken themselves to organization and 

 to trying the force of numbers for the acquisition of what 

 they believe to be their rights. They may be striking out 

 in some cases blindly and in a hasty, unreasonable way; 

 but what they mean to do is to agitate the subject until it 

 gets some attention and some thought from men competent 

 to devise a remedy, or at least a relief. ' ' The evils com- 

 plained of by Mr. Smith are not imaginary, as will be seen 



