IS THE UNION A POLITICAL ORGANIZATION? 273 



some other useful animal could be substituted in its place 

 would be a great calamity. For our part we are in favor 

 of either compelling them to work in the harness or giv- 

 ing place to some useful animal that will work, and not 

 stand and growl at one of its own species. The following 

 from the Tennessee State Wheel is so appropriate to the 

 subject under consideration that we cheerfully quote it 



Some men speak alarmingly of the prospects of the 

 Agricultural Wheel going into politics, and say that it will 

 overthrow the dominant party. 



"The Wheel is determined to keep out of corrupt 

 politics, and equally determined to keep politics out of it. 

 If the two ruling parties were purged of all corrupt and 

 hackneyed politicians and purified from all their venal 

 tenets, there would be no cause for alarm; nor would there 

 be a necessity for the existence of an organization of the 

 agricultural elements of both political parties to demand 

 their rights as citizens of a government that guarantees 

 equal rights and equal privileges to all classes. 



"We are not arrayed in the opposition to any party, 

 nor do we express antipathy to any political organization, 

 but we are organized against a class of evils hostile to the 

 agricultural interest of- the country, which both parties 

 have fostered for twenty years by a system of class legisla- ( 

 tion. Our wants have been ignored, and our repeated 

 petitions to our law makers, both in Congress and the 

 Legislature, have been unheeded. We stood in the broken 

 lines and drew a picture of our sufferings, and asked that 

 the discriminations that proved a hangman's halter to the 

 farmer and a golden girdle to monopolists, be removed, 

 and we be placed on an equality before the law, but we 

 were not in a position to command recognition, because 

 we were not in such as to wield power. Now we 

 present an unbroken line and demand our rights, and the 

 cry is, we are going into politics. Let politics get out of 



