State convention—duty of farmers. 
339 
money, and with impudence peculiar to gluttony, asks for more. 
Prompt action is demanded ; guided always by intelligence and 
virtue. 
SPEED ON THE GRANGE ! 
Speed on the Club ! Speed on Reform ! “For God shall pun¬ 
ish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquities. He 
shall cause the arrogance of the proud to cease. He shall lay 
low the haughtiness of the terrible : for he will make a man more 
precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of 
Ophir.” 
It has been my privilege to visit many of our flourishing 
states, among others the champion wheat-growing state, Minne¬ 
sota. There I saw, by the posters of the Northern Pacific Rail¬ 
road, advertising its bonds, that their value was predicated on a 
grant containing more land than is contained in the whole of the 
New England states, with Maryland added, and this immense do¬ 
main is free from taxation until disposed of by the railroad com¬ 
pany. I also visited the best portions of land on the Minnesota 
line of the St. Paul and Pacific, with its land-grant of twenty 
miles in width, and became intimate with many of the farmers 
who had purchased on time, expecting to make that fair land 
their home. Many indeed were the cases—not the exceptions by 
any means—where, after repeated efforts to meet the obligations 
to the railroad, and the taxes incident to new countries, they were 
at last compelled to abandon their claims and turn their faces 
toward the setting sun. Under such disadvantages, what is true 
of one place is true of nearly all. Now, if there is a class on 
earth who ought to be befriended and not crippled by government, 
it is the actual settler on .the frontier who takes his life in his 
hand, faces mercenary savage and rigorous climate, and converts 
wilderness and desolation into independent states; who, with 
courage, power, and might of manhood, bids farewell to the 
things that are behind, and presses forward his country’s destiny. 
I submit, is not his claim far superior to that of a railroad com¬ 
pany which builds roads where they are not needed, but when¬ 
ever and wherever it can get good land without paying for it ? 
Revolutions never go backward. Buty of more than ordinary 
