EARLY HISTORY OF THE WHEEL. 59 



Statute said nothing about the intention with which the 

 act was done, and that it was also immaterial whether the 

 remaining property was worth more or less than the mort- 

 gage debt, that the offense by the words of the act was 

 complete by the simple act of selling or trading any part 

 of the mortgaged property, without regard to motive or 

 any other facts, and the Supreme Court of the State 

 affirmed the judgment. (Beard vs. State, 43 Ark., p. 

 284.) But the Judges of that Court were so shocked at 

 the inhumanity of the law (and should have been none 

 the less shocked at the merchant) that they urged upon 

 the Legislature its repeal or modification, and under 

 pressure of that recommendation it was modified; but in 

 the meantime Beard was sent to the penitentiary. He 

 was pardoned by the Governor. ' ' 



At the time the Wheel was started this abominable 

 instrument held with an iron grasp the purse-strings of 

 Arkansas fanners, owing to a severe drouth that made it 

 almost a desert. The merchants, doctors and others, 

 instead of offering to sustain a part of the loss of crops, 

 only drew the reins tighter and harder. In this extremity 

 the doctors, whom the farmers had made, met in Lonoke 

 county and resolved that after a specified time that they 

 would not practice in any family indebted to them, unless 

 the head of the family would give a mortgage. All that 

 we could hear in Prairie county was mortgages! mort- 

 gages! MORTGAGES! It appeared that the devil had a 

 mortgage on the monopolist's soul and body which they 

 wanted to shift on all the laborers. Just here could be 

 related a true story of a victim of the mortgage, sad in its 

 details but enough has been written of that character, 

 as all these wrongs are recorded in a book not printed with 

 ink on paper, or subject to loss or decay, and will surely 

 be righted. 



It is sometimes asked, why do farmers mortgage? 



