Wisconsin State Agricult veal Society. 
337 
and wheat, which he must exchange for clothing, coffee, tea, sugar 
and other household articles, for the machinery without which he 
cannot successfully compete with other farmers, for school books, 
newspapers and magazines and for those articles of “luxury” that 
are now found in every farmer’s home. As long as there was a de¬ 
mand for all his corn and wheat, prosperity prevailed. But he has 
now produced more of these grains than the country needs, and 
hence finds it impossible to dispose of his products at remunerative 
prices. He is in the same situation that a wagon maker would be, 
who without having regard for the fifty wagons needed in a com¬ 
munity each year, should enlarge his factory and turn out a hun¬ 
dred. When the market was fully supplied, fifty wagons would 
remain unsold, and if working on limited capital, the manufacturer 
would be unable to pay either his workmen, or for the material he 
had consumed. Bankruptcy would be the inevitable result of such 
a course. 
Wheat, it is true, can be exported to foreign countries when there 
is a demand, but foreign demand is fitful, and in no degree sufficient 
for the dependence of an interest possessing the magnitude of the 
one under consideration. If any crop is to be grown as a staple 
product, over a given extent of territory, there must be a certain 
and continued demand for an average yield upon that territory, ‘in 
order to make the raising of such crop, a safe venture. Such a de¬ 
mand does not exist for the immense wheat crop of the western 
states. Hence the farmers’ craft has been continually threatened 
with wrecking upon the Scylla of an over production on the one hand 
or upon the Charybdis of a poor crop on the other. The dilemma 
was this; he could not expect high prices if his yield was a good 
one, while if the prices were high, they were so because of the 
drouth, the chinch-bug, or the grass-hopper. So that whether or 
not his acres yielded abundantly, hard times perpetually stared him 
in the face. 
To the man who fully comprehended his position, the future 
must have presented a cheerless, desolate aspect. The violent and 
bitter attacks of the past two 3 'ears upon railroads and commission 
men, by the farming community, were the result of the desperation 
to which they had been driven by their apparently hopeless condi¬ 
tion. At the close of a year’s hard labor, they were in no better, 
often not in as good circumstances as at its beginning. Creditors 
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