practical papers—Transportation, Etc . 363 
are growing fat out of the hard toil of the cultivator of the soil. 
Is there any remedy for this evil within reasonable reach of the 
farmer class? is a question pertinent at this point. And if the 
question can be affirmatively answered I shall have gained the 
point sought in this paper. While at Janesville last month at¬ 
tending the meeting of the State Grange, I saw the representative 
of a house in Philadelphia who had contracted to erect at Clinton, 
Iowa, a boot and shoe establishment sufficient to supply that 
entire state with all kinds of goods in that line. This firm stands 
ready at any time to contract with the farmers of this state to put 
up machinery and give us the advantage of purchasing from first 
hands, thus keeping the money at home, and furnishing a market 
at our doors for the amount of food necessary to supply the work¬ 
men. 
But why need we contract with any firm; we have the men in 
every village and city in this state ready to supply us with every¬ 
thing we want in that line or any other. In conversation with 
the owner of the leading boot and shoe house in my own town re¬ 
cently, I was assured by him that he could sell a pair of his own 
make for six dollars, that would last a farmer as long as two pairs 
of such as he was selling of eastern manufacture for four dollars. 
But, he remarked, “I cannot make the farmers believe this, and I 
can make as much profit on a pair of eastern made boots as on a 
pair of my own manufacture.’' There is in this state an amount 
of unimproved water power sufficient to drive machinery to make 
this one of the greatest manufacturing states of the Union. There 
is in my own county, and in fact in a large portion of this state, a 
supply of hardwood timber suitable for the manufacture of all 
kinds of farm implements, and it seems to me that if the Patrons 
of Husbandry would turn their attention to the formation of joint 
stock companies for the manufacturing of reapers, cultivators and 
plows, instead of organizing to ship produce, they could much more 
readily defend themselves against what they claim to be encroach¬ 
ments of middlemen. It seems to me that under existing circum¬ 
stances this will be a necessity. The plow makers having met in 
convention and solemnly resolved that they would not sell their 
goods to patrons only through their regulaaly constituted territo¬ 
rial agents, and the patrons having as solemnly resolved that they 
