440 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
at present, besides interest on bonds that were sold at a heavy dis 
count. This is one of the reasons that railroad freights are so 
high. If railroads were built for cash and no bonds sold for less 
than par, they could carry freight on the main lines between the 
west and east, aud pay good interest on the capital invested, and 
charge one-half less freight than they now do. 
The legislature of 1872 ought to be censured by the farmers, 
for not enacting appropriate laws for the organization of a board 
of railroad commissioners, with power to inquire into all com¬ 
plaints and abuses, as recommended by Governor Washburn. 
The farmers of Wisconsin, I think, will find that we have a Gov- 
r*- 
ernor who will do us justice, by executing all just and constitu¬ 
tional laws that our legislature may enact, to protect the people 
against combinations and monopolies. We must elect men to our 
legislature who will represent their own, by representing our in¬ 
terests. For many years nearly all of our state and national leg¬ 
islation has been in favor of monopolies and capitalists, and so 
long as the farmers received good prices for their products, they 
paid but little attention to what laws were made. But when times 
changed, so that their crops would not pay for the cost of produc¬ 
tion, without paying interest on their farms and machinery, and 
when their farms could not be sold for much more than half their 
former value, then they began to inquire what was the cause. 
They are now organizing all over the west, and by the tone of 
their speeches, and resolutions passed in the conventions lately 
held in Illinois, we can see that the farmers are at last aroused to 
a sense of their danger. We should organize in Wisconsin, as 
they are doing in Illinois, and call upon the farmers in every 
county in our state, to hold conventions and appoint delegates to 
state conventions, to be held for the purpose of devising some way 
to remedy the existing wrongs that the farmers are suffering. I 
am well aware that there are many men who will say that the 
farmers cannot unite and organize as other classes of men do. 
This is the great hope of those who are opposed to farmers co-op¬ 
erating for self defense. I will acknowledge that farmers are very 
slow to see how they can be benefited by co-operation ; and being 
scattered over a vast extent of country, it is difficult to bring 
them together and unite them for a common purpose. But this 
