Vol. LVIII. No. 2595. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 21, 1899. 
*1 PER YEAR. 
THE HARD FIST OF AGRICULTURE. 
THE TIME HAS COME TO USE IT. 
Get Fingers and Thumbs Together. 
HANDLER AND FARMER.—Hundreds of years 
ago the handler began to consider himself better than 
the farmer, and entitled to a larger share of the 
world’s profits and pleasures. By “handlers” we 
mean all those who touch or carry the farmer’s pro¬ 
duce, after it leaves his wagon. As we have often 
pointed out, all the wealth of the world has sprung 
from the farm, the forest and the mine. The world’s 
workers may be broadly divided into two great 
classes—producers and handlers. Down through gen¬ 
eration after generation of handlers the feeling has 
grown that somehow the farmers or producers were 
specially designed by Nature to do the world’s rough 
work and take their chief pay for doing it in the 
pleasure of being called “the bone and sinew of the 
country! Again and again this feeling has grown 
into rank injustice, and there have been times, both 
in Europe and in this country, when the wrongs of 
the farmer have led to riot and violence. To-day, most 
American farmers feel 
that, instead of working 
with them for a fair di¬ 
vision of profit, the hand¬ 
lers are grasping far more 
than their share. They un¬ 
derstand, too, that the 
time has gone by when 
begging and pleading will 
bring their rights. It is 
now simply a question of 
strength against strength 
-organization against or¬ 
ganization. 
FINGER AND FIST.— 
Now our picture illustrates 
two things. First, the 
hand. Let us suppose you 
have come to a point with 
your neighbor when the 
only way to secure your 
rights is to enforce them. 
The muscles of your arm and shoulder 
are firm and well strung. You do not 
stick out your thumb and poke your 
neighbor in the ribs. That is the way 
jokers act, there is no force or dignity 
in it. You don’t stick out your fore¬ 
finger and poke him with that. That is 
the way bores do—it would only irritate 
him, and besides, you could not use your 
full strength without breaking your 
finger. The same with other single fin¬ 
gers. You can make no show of force 
with any one or any two of them. 
When you clench the four fingers and 
the thumb tightly together you make a fist and, with 
the same power in the elbow and shoulder that only 
hurt the single finger, you put all your weight into 
one blow. The single finger cannot represent your 
strength and force—the fist can do so. 
THE FIST OF AGRICULTURE.—Now follow the 
pictures around once more. An honest farmer of 
good name and reputation does not receive fair treat¬ 
ment from a railroad. He goes to see the officials, 
and gets what the city boys call “the marble heart.” 
He is only one man—what does he amount to? An¬ 
other farmer goes to see why his grain was docked 
or his wool marked down. He is only one man—like 
the forefinger on the hand. He represents himself, 
and he gets—a vacant stare and a promise to “look 
it up.” Another farmer wishes to know why the com¬ 
mission man docked his fruit. He makes almost as 
much of a dent as the single finger on the hand. An¬ 
other farmer worked hard to elect John Smith to 
Congress. Smith was to do great things for the 
farmers, and our friend goes to remind him of it. He 
gets as far as the door, and sees—the servant. He 
was a big man before election—now he is only one 
voter. And so it goes. Your single man, represent¬ 
ing only himself, or possibly a few neighbors, runs 
against a great corporation, powerful and strong. The 
corporation is never afraid of the individual. It has 
ground out too many of them. The individual farmer 
is like a single finger on the great arm and hand of 
agriculture. He cannot make even a dent on the 
handler. But at last the five men go home and learn 
how. They organize their neighbors, and at last each 
one has 500 farmers at his back. They then go to- 
THE FARM FIST FOR A FINISH FIGHT. Fig. 208. 
gether, and stand shoulder to shoulder, and say: “We 
are not simply five men; we represent 2,500 farmers, 
who have pledged themselves to back us up through 
thick and thin.” 
That is what we call the fist of agriculture. It is 
not five gentle pokes, each with a single finger, but a 
hard, straight-from-the-shoulder blow. They do not 
get “the marble heart,” but rather “the glad hand.” 
.The man who represents the corporation sees that he 
is no longer dealing with individuals, but with an 
organization. He doesn’t sit still and say, “What do 
you want, anyway?” He comes out from behind his 
desk and says, “What can I do for you?” It is just 
the difference between the thumb or the single finger 
and the solid fist. The power behind the hand is the 
same. In one case it is organized, in the other it is 
not. It hurts or it gets hurt! 
GETTING TOGETHER—This is but one illustra¬ 
tion of the power of organization. The handlers are 
organized. They are in the towns and cities, where 
such organizing is easier than in the country. The 
trusts and corporations have a new method of or¬ 
ganization—they squeeze out competition, and master 
the situation by killing off the individual. Some 
men who have grown gray in efforts to organize 
farmers effectively are almost discouraged, and say 
that it is impossible to hold them together. We do 
not take this gloomy view. The farmers have lived 
apart. Their solitary lives have bred distrust and 
narrow views of independent action. The fingers of 
agriculture are stiff. It is hard to limber up the 
joints so as to clench them into a fist. The individual 
fingers lose their character when the fist is tightly 
closed. Farmers have been slow to learn just what 
“organization” means. They begin to understand 
that every man who goes into an organization must 
throw in a little part of himself in order to make the 
whole strong. The little finger on the fist cannot 
stand out and show itself—every joint and every 
knuckle must be fairly and honestly in place if the 
fist is to represent the arm 
and the shoulder. Farmers 
are getting closer together. 
They are reading and 
thinking more in concert. 
The farmers’ institute, the 
station bulletins—all are 
training farmers to think 
along definite lines. It 
doesn’t matter so much 
what they think about at 
first, so long as they pick 
up the habit of thinking 
together. The Grange, the 
farmers’ club, and other 
organizations will pick up 
the work, and slowly but 
surely bend the stiff, un¬ 
willing fingers together 
into a fist, that will sur¬ 
prise the world at the 
mighty power behind it. 
THE OPEN FIST.—Yet the fist that 
never opens is as bad as the hand that 
never closes. The fist of agriculture 
must strike, yet the farmer must also 
be open-handed, when the time comes. 
Many a battle for the farmer has been 
lost because some of those who com¬ 
bined were close-fisted. It is an old 
story that many years ago, in some of 
the country districts of England, prize¬ 
fights between women were not of un¬ 
usual occurrence. One of the rules of 
the ring in such contests, was to com¬ 
pel the fighters to hold a silver coin in 
each hand, the fight to be forfeited if they opened 
their fists and let the coin fall out. This rule was 
said to be caused by a tendency of the contestants to 
scratch and pull hair when hard-pressed in the fight. 
It would be impossible for them to use their nails 
and hold the coin in their hand. Thus, their fight¬ 
ing was limited to the scientific rather than to the 
effective. Many a grown-up man will smile at this 
statement; and yet, hold on, my friend, have not 
there been times in combinations when you have 
been so anxious to hold on to the dollar, that you 
could not permit yourself to do your most effective 
fighting? Sometimes neighbors and friends come to¬ 
gether in an organization, and pledge themselves to 
stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and put up a 
strong, honest fight against injustice or oppression. 
The fight starts out well, but all of a sudden it goes to 
