' 276 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The present situation, as it is brought vividly to mind by these 
hard times, forcibly suggests the words of a distinguished writer 
on the subject of political economy. He says : 
“ Commerce is designed to bring the producer and consumer into 
relation; that is if it has any object. But in itself it produces 
nothing; it adds nothing to the commodities which it circulates. 
It is obviously, then, for the general interest to reduce commercial 
agents to the smallest number, and to carry over the excess to 
some productive employment.” 
In our societies, precisely the contrary takes place ; the agents 
of commerce are multiplied beyond measure; designed only to 
play a subordinate part, they have usurped the highest rank; they 
absorb the largest portion of the common dividend out of all 
manner of proportion to the services they render; they hold 
the producer in servile dependence; they reduce to its lowest 
terms the wages of workmen; and they extort from the con¬ 
sumer without mercy. 
The truth of these words is on every hand manifest. It is found 
in the fact that while the agricultural interests are wofully de¬ 
pressed, our great commercial centers are growing in wealth and 
population with almost fabulous rapidity. It is found in the de¬ 
plorable fact that while the farmers of Iowa are burning corn as 
fuel, the price of meat, the solvent of corn is so enormously high, 
even in our western cities, that day laborers are almost obliged to 
go without it. The butter for which the farmer can scarcely get 
the cost of production is accounted in the adjacent cities as being 
beyond the reach of the artizan. As was said by that earnest 
friend of American labor, Horace Greeley, the machinery 
whereby vegetables and fruits, for example, are collected from the 
farms and gardens of the producers, and supplied to the neighbor¬ 
ing cities and villages is nearly as expensive and rude as it was 
in the days of Homer and the elder Pharaohs. It is estimated 
upon careful calculation that fully one-fourth of the earnings of 
the poor in cities is absorbed by the profits of retail trade : and 
mainly of the trade in what they eat and drink. 
On the other hand, the farmer bled in selling is also bled most 
unmercifully as a buyer. Nearly every article which comes to 
him from the manufacturer passes through many hands, each 
