MONEY FALLACIES. 
379 
failed to recognize what it is that hurts him. When the fall¬ 
ing price of his products began to press upon him, his first 
thought was that it was the railroads. If the railroads, 
which had made his farm a possibility and without which 
it could have been no more than Robinson Crusoe’s farm, 
could be persuaded or compelled to haul his produce for less, 
he would get more profit. He applied the law, and the re¬ 
sult was that England and the Eastern States got the whole 
benefit of the reduced tariffs and he got poorer railroad 
service and less of it. He had bitten a file and broken his 
teeth. Still, the pressure upon him grew more and more 
intense. Surely something is wrong somewhere, and some¬ 
body must be robbing him. Looking eastward or north¬ 
ward, he sees wealth rapidly piling up and contrasts it with 
his own languishing condition. The effect upon his mind 
is inevitable and is only history repeating itself. Surely 
that vast wealth must in a great measure have been wrung 
from him, the toiler of toilers. If justice had been done he 
would have been at least an equal sharer in it. He would 
be more than human if he failed to think so. Here 
are the men who have by black art or by the relentless use 
of the tyrannical power of capital squeezed or leached out 
the profits of his noble industry and concentrated them into 
colossal fortunes. How have they done it, and how can 
their art be proscribed and their power for oppression 
broken ? Thousands of men are ready to tell them. To 
the man who is really suffering any kind of a doctor who 
will look wise, talk sympathetically, and promise him a 
speedy cure is welcome. He must be careful, however, not 
to assign as a cause of the malady anything which every¬ 
body knows is beyond the reach of physic, or else the patient 
will have no use for his nostrums. The quacks have told 
him of many causes of his suffering, and one set of them 
assure him that something is the matter with the money of 
the country. Money, the circulating medium, is the life¬ 
blood of economic organism; there is not enough of it, and 
what there is is out of order. Something must be done to 
