THE DISCONTENT OK THE FARMER. 127 



continually turn, not even in such matters as the currency 

 and the tariff. So only that any policy he made permanent, 

 it seems to me that we shall all get on ahout alike under it. 

 As matters stand the only remedy which I have to suggest 

 for the next few generations is that farmers must know more 

 and fight harder. As a farmer I desire cheap labor, cheap 

 transportation, and cheap merchandise of all kinds that I 

 have to buy, and high prices for everything that I have to 

 sell. All other classes are in the same situation. It is a law 

 of commerce that no agreement is possible between contending 

 interests, until after an exhaustive trial of strength. It is 

 also a law that agreement, when possible, invariably follows 

 such contests. We are now engaged in the conflict, which 

 I suppose will continue indefinitely, and sometime close in 

 the usual way. None of us now here will see the close, or 

 can even imagine the nature of a settlement. But we know 

 that it will be made, for it is the law. 



The law of nature is that the due of every man shall be 

 all that he can get and keep. She seems to have filled the 

 world with warring organisms, for the mere pleasure of seeing 

 them fight, caring nothing who shall conquer. This process, 

 which results in the untimely death of the majority, we have 

 learned in these later years to call evolution. But evolution 

 has at last developed a race which, having overcome all other 

 beings, shows signs of trying conclusions with nature herself. 

 The history of mankind is a story of constant warfare with 

 nature, and constant victory for man. Of later years there 

 is an increasing number of those who are determined to 

 abolish the method of distribution of satisfactions according to 

 strength alone, which is the corner-stone of nature's method. 

 Who shall say that the progress of evolution shall not destroy 

 evolution itself? Possibly it may, and then may come the 

 end of all things. Certainly we can have no conception of 

 life unaccompanied by struggle. The condition wherein no 

 struggle is, we call death. This may be all wrong, since the 

 ages which will be required for such develojiment may be 

 sufficient for the evolution in us of qualities which will make 

 existence without struggle endurable. We can not tell. Such 



