STATE CONVENTION—PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY. 295 
the world, seem to be the class that many powerful corporations 
and associations have waged war against, and it has been prosecu¬ 
ted to that extent that farming is about the last resort for enligh¬ 
tened, intelligent citizens to secure an honest living by. 
I will mention some of the heavy burdens that are imposed oil 
the farmers by corporations. First, the exhorbitant prices we are 
compelled to pay for farm machinery — such as harvesters, 
reapers, mowers, seeders, threshing machines, etc. Manufacturers 
of such machines have combined under forfeiture not to sell be¬ 
low a fixed price to any parties except their general or special 
agents, whom they require to sell at prices which in many cases 
are from two to four times above actual cost. 
Selling farm products is a question for consideration. Instead 
of being sold and shipped direct to the consumer as they ought to 
be, they pass into the hands of speculators, and are made a matter 
of speculation and gambling by the capitalists, who often combine 
to get in their hands a sufficient amount of any one kind of pro¬ 
duce to former a ring or corner and force prices up to exorbitant 
rates, compelling the consumers to pay such price as they choose 
to ask, or starve. 
When one pork packing house in Chicago can co-operate with, 
other houses throughout the west to that extent that they can get 
a corner on the pork trade so as to clear $1,000,000 on the rise of 
pork in a very short time, it seems to me as though there was 
great injustice being done to both producer and consumer. 
$1,000,000 would pay 5,000 farm laborers at the rate of $200 per 
year for one year’s labor, or it would pay 200 men their wages for 
25 years. 
Railroad companies are compelling the husbandmen to pay 
higher freights than they can afford to, and I think unjustly so. 
The cost of getting our produce to market is so much that in many 
cases it leaves no profit for the grower. When railroad companies 
demand an income on their capital stock sufficient to pay them a 
good interest on their estimated capital of $38,000 per mile in 
Wisconsin, $45,000 in Iowa, and the actual cash cost of such roads 
does not exceed perhaps $19,000, they are demanding an income 
on $19,000 per mile of estimated or imaginary stock. In many 
cases throughout the west, such railroad companies have received 
