192 THE FARMER AS A BUSINESS MAN. 



single day's work, than $1.50 per day, without board, for ten 

 hours' work, the laborer to come and go outside of working 

 hours. The hours for department clerks in Washington, if I 

 remember correctly, ar'5 from 9 a. m. to 3 p. m. Opposite a 

 house where I once lived for a time, was a small city park. 

 Two gardeners were employed in it, probably at $75 per 

 month each. It was a matter of never-failing interest to the 

 families whose dwellings fronted on the park, to see the 

 ingenious ways which those men adopted to seem to be at 

 work, and yet not work. There was real work for about one 

 man half the time. 



The plundering of the public through party machinery, 

 by means of unnecessary employees, shorter hours, and higher 

 wages than are paid by private employers, is })erennial and 

 fearful. On the other hand, the higher positions, requiring 

 special attainments or involving great responsibilities, are 

 sometimes not paid enough. The Secretary of Agriculture 

 states that it is usually not possible for his department to 

 retain, in the scientific divisions, the best men which the 

 service develops. Higher salaries elsewhere draw them away. 



The responsibility for this state of things lies upon the 

 people — upon me who write this, and upon the reader who 

 reads it — there, and upon those like us, and nowhere else. 

 It is as much my business and yours, reader, as that of any- 

 body else, to endeavor to put a stop to it. The managing 

 editor of a great daily paper lately said to me that it could 

 not be stopped. That is not true. We not only can stop it, 

 but we shall do so — when poverty compels us, and not before. 

 So long as we can endure the plundering, we shall permit our- 

 selves to be plundered. 



But in the meantime we can lay down the principles upon 

 which we must proceed when we decide that we have been 

 plundered long enough. We can discuss them in our granges 

 and other assemblies. We can formulate our conclusions, and 

 publish them in the local press, and thus educate the people. 

 Finally we can pledge the delegates whom we send to political 

 conventions to seek to incorporate them in party platforms, 

 and pledge candidates for office to work for them and abide 



