438 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
per car instead of 154, as now charged. This would give the 
company, from $1,000 to $1,200 per train, or nearly $400 per day, 
but at the present charges, if the train consists of thirty cars of 
cattle, it would be $4,200 per train from Chicago to New York. 
If the train is run at the rate of fifteen miles per hour, it would 
take two and one half days to make the trip. But count three 
days, and six men to each train, and count for change of men nine 
days for each man, of eight hours per day each, which is certainly 
liberal, and their wages would amount to $162. Count coal at 
$138, which would pay for twenty-five tons ; allow for wear of 
cars and road, salary of officers and interest on capital, and you 
have $3,000 left to the company for running a single train from 
Chicago to New York. Can any honest man believe that such 
charges are just, or that the people should submit to, or allow 
themselves to be robbed in this way ? Secondly. Another wrong 
that I think ought not to be submitted to by the farmers, is the 
present price and manner of selling agricultural implements. 
We pay double the actual cost of manufacturing, (allowing law¬ 
ful interest on the capital invested), for farm machinery. I was 
informed by a reliable man who knows whereof be speaks, that 
the actual cost of manufacturing a threshing machine with power, 
is less than $250. I believe that the agents are willing at present 
to accommodate the farmers with one at from $600 to $700. I 
venture to say that the best reaper made in the United States, 
where made in large numbers, costs less than $75 each. One of 
those very enterprizing reaper gentlemen who holds a special 
privilege to sell machines, will accommodate you with one of them 
at $225. The same ratio of extortion, I believe, extends through 
nearly all of the machinery and farm implements that we have to 
buy. A sewing machine that your wife has to pay $75 for, I am 
told are put up by the manufacturer, in boxes ready to ship, for 
less than $20 each. 
The attempt to reduce our currency to a specie basis has al¬ 
ready made bankrupts of thousands, and, if the present policy is 
continued, it will ruin and bring to poverty tens of thousands of 
farmers in the west, who contracted debts when money was plenty 
and prices were high, by reason of the difference in value between 
greenbacks and gold. If gold was now at a premium of from 60 
