158 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
they are persuaded that they are enemies and act accordingly, both 
suffer. The discovery made by Adam Smith, which was described 
in such rosy hues, as having lessened the causes and chances of 
war, and added to the happiness of mankind, hardly prepared us 
for the gloomy view which was to follow. 
Capital is the result of labor. A farmer without any imple¬ 
ment of husbandry can accomplish little; he may grovel with his 
hands in the earth and force from nature a precarious existence. 
Place in his hands a simple hoe, and you give him capital with 
which his labor is rendered ten-fold more effective, and he soon 
adds to his capital a plough, and so on to the end of the chapter. 
Now it is said that the price of labor is controlled by capital. 
I deny the fact, and my friend has read Adam Smith to little pur¬ 
pose not to have discovered that the unerring laws of supply and 
demand control this whole question. When the harvest is plen¬ 
teous and the laborers are few, then labor brings a high price; 
but when there are more laborers than work to be done, then 
there is competition among those who have their labor to sell, 
and labor is cheap. This you have seen illustrated this season in 
Chicago, in a remarkable degree. There, so far from capital con¬ 
trolling labor, the competition of capital has sent labor up to 
unprecedented prices. Nor does capital control the price of 
wheat. The same unrelenting law of supply and demand regu¬ 
lates that. If wheat is low, it is because the wheat growing coun¬ 
tries produce more than is wanted for consumption, and no com¬ 
bination of capital is possible to keep down the price of wheat, 
when there is great competition among buyers, resulting from a 
short crop. Now every farmer is to some extent a capitalist, and 
their true interest is co-operation. Let them combine their capi¬ 
tal with their labor, and instead of sending all their hard earnings 
abroad to pay for foreign gewgaws, which they do not need, or to 
New England for articles of necessity that can just as well be 
fabricated near home, and railing at their hard fortune and the 
oppressions of capital, erect manufactories at home. They will 
find that the true philosopher’s stone. Set your surplus labor at 
work, and you will soon have abundance of capital. 
He had seen on the fair grounds some of the finest sheep in the 
world. Why should their wool be. sent to New England to be 
