272 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
send in the required reports, manufactured expressly for the oc¬ 
casion, sometimes reporting vast acreage, with over-full crops all 
over the country, when less than a half crop exists, and vice versa ; 
sometimes inducing farmers to ship when they ought to store, and 
vice versa; and every time reaping a rich reward, by fraud and 
falsehood, from the too confiding, unprotected farmer, who sees 
these reports and knows they do not represent the facts in the 
case, so far as he and his neighbors are concerned; but supposes 
that his little circle has been overlooked, or is the only locality 
misrepresented, and that it would make very little change, every 
other place is correctly reported, the supply more than equal to 
the demand, and, of course, he must sell for what he can get, and 
right then, or he can’t sell at all. 
Every other branch has some means of protection, and says to 
us, buy our labor at a remunerative price or we will not sell. Why 
* not, we say in return. My intellect and protection is equal to 
any; the dollar invested in my farm equivalent to that invested 
in any other enterprise; pay me the cost of production with a 
like remunerative profit or I’ll keep my produce ; you work eight 
or ten hours per diem, and have time to cultivate your mind, and 
allow me and mine to work the same hours and have the same 
time for intellectual improvement, instead of working as we do 
from dawn till dark, with no time for anything, but that you and 
I eat and live. 
Then my advice to farmers is, work and watch; see that your 
crops are correctly reported in the proper places and at the proper 
timej see that laws are made for your protection, and not for 
purposes of oppression ; not for lawyers to construe and yen pay 
for. Say to other trades and professions, whose brittle tenure of 
life depends upon your efforts, that the farmer is the lord of crea¬ 
tion—a power in the land that will be felt and must be respected. 
It is true to some extent that the farmers throughout our west¬ 
ern states have not the means of giving their children the educa¬ 
tion they might desire them to have, but it is also often too true 
that the desire does not equal the means. Where there is a will 
there is a way is an old adage that loses nothing of truth by age ? . 
and if the farmer would only wake up from this sleep that is de¬ 
vouring him, shake off his apathy and lethargy that is engulfing 
