continually turn, not even in such matters as the currency and the tariff. So only that any policy be made permanent, it seems to me that we shall all get on about alike under it. As matters stand the only remedy which I have to suggest for the next few generations is that farmers must know more and fight harder. As a farmer I desire cheap labor, cheap transportation, and cheap merchandise of all kinds that I have to buy, and high prices for everything that I have to sell. All other classes are in the same situation. It is a law of commerce that no agreement is possible between contending interests, until after an exhaustive trial of strength. It is also a law that agreement, when possible, invariably follows such contests. We are now engaged in the conflict, which I suppose will continue indefinitely, and sometime close in the usual way. None of us now here will see the close, or can even imagine the nature of a settlement. But we know that it will be inade, for it is the law.

The law of nature is that the due of every man shall be all that he can get and keep. She seems to have filled the world with warring organisms, for the mere pleasure of seeing them fight, caring nothing who shall conquer. This process, which results in the untimely death of the majority, we have learned in these later years to call evolution. But evolution has at last developed a race which, having overcome all other beings, shows signs of trying conclusions with nature herself. The history of mankind is a story of constant warfare with nature, and constant victory for man. Of later years there is an increasing number of those who are determined to abolish the method of distribution of satisfactions according to strength alone, which is the corner-stone of nature's method. Who shall say that the progress of evolution shall not destroy evolution itself? Possibly it may, and then may come the end of all things. Certainly we can have no conception of life unaccompanied by struggle. The condition wherein no struggle is, we call death. This may be all wrong, since the ages which will be required for such development may be sufficient for the evolution in us of qualities which will make existence without struggle endurable. We can not tell. Such

a race would, perhaps, differ no more from us than we differ from the primeval man. So far as we can now conceive, it would be a race of degenerates.

But if we fight nature, we must fight together. So long as we are divided, she is too strong for us. And yet by her own law she may be contributing to her own destruction, since, if we reach unity, it must be by the extinction of those who will not cooperate. The single man can not compete with organized man-is not now doing it successfully. The best organized are the most prosperous. Those who will not cooperate will die. The farmer, being now less organized than some others, suffers in ways that we have seen. Gradually he will cooperate more, because his environment will compel him. In part, it may be the present farmers who will do this, and, in part, the successors of those who will die because they will not cooperate. At present, his incompetence to act for the common ends with his fellows is a great cause of the farmer's discontent.

It will be seen that I do not think that the real causes of the farmer's discontent lie upon the surface, or can be removed by local treatment. If the farmer could pay all his debts with what he calls cheap money, be relieved from all taxation, and be given free transportation for himself and his produce, with a bounty on all his exports, so far as he is discontented he would be discontented still. Possibly he would be more discontented, since the seemingly more genial environment would attract to the industry still more of the weaker sort. As I have said, we do not know what qualities may yet develop in our race, but, as we are now, the rugged conditions of competition tend to eliminate discontent by the brutal process of the destruction of the discontented.

We are all children of one family, governed by one law. I can conceive of no adequate treatment of the condition of the farmer except in connection with the condition of others. In the operation of the law which controls all of us, I have seemed to myself to find the real causes of the farmer's discontent, and to get some glimpse of the remedies which must cure it. The first step is to decide what is a reasonable

standard of life for the industrious, honest, and thrifty, with which, when attained, we should be content, and beyond which desire is unreasonable. The next step is to learn how to control the unreasonable. Here is where we must fight nature, who favors the unreasonable, if they be strong. We do not need to concern ourselves with the lazy, the dishonest, or the unthrifty. Nature will take care of them. She will kill them.

BOOK FOURTH.

The Farmer as a Business Man.

T

CHAPTER I.

THE FARMER AND THE BANKER.*

HERE are mean men in all walks of life. The accumulating instinct, where it is decidedly strong, involves a certain hardness of character which is not lovely. But on the other hand, the accumulating instinct has its corresponding virtues. The accumulating man is careful in promise, but punctual in fulfilment. When a strong desire to possess is joined to a character of weak moral fiber, we have the typical" mean man" of the country town. Those are the men who are on the watch to take advantage of necessity. lending money at rates which no business can pay, and ruthlessly sacrificing the security when default of payment is made. These men seldom attempt to do anything which they have not the legal right to do. They prey upon the weakness and bad judgment of their fellow-men.

Somehow, rural popular opinion tends to associate men of this class with the banking business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Occasionally, of course, a "mean man" controls a bank, but very seldom. In the first place, such men are not usually satisfied with the profits of the banking business, but, even if they were, they are not able to get into it, for the reason that the other stockholders will not have them. The

* See Appendix E for documents relating to subjects of this book.

essence of the banking business is a profit on deposits, and those in control of the bank must not be obnoxious to the mass of the people. The managers of a bank must be men who have the respect and good-will of the community, or deposits will be light, and the bank unprofitable.

It is another popular error to consider the managers of banks as persons of great wealth. Of course, wealthy men often do manage banks, but, as a rule, the officers of banks are men of moderate means, but high character, employed upon fair, but not large, salaries. They are not handling their own money, but that of others, and the rules upon which they handle it are not made by themselves, but are the result of the experience of all banks. The money of the banks is not largely the property of the stockholders, much less of the managers, but belongs to those who have deposited it, and who have the right to take it out without notice. The profit of banking arises from the known fact that, while every dollar of deposits in commercial banks is subject to check at sight, as a matter of fact the greater portion; in ordinary times, will be allowed to remain indefinitely, the withdrawals and deposits about balancing each other from week to week. From seventy-five to eighty-five per cent of the deposits can, therefore, be loaned with safety, and the interest on these loans, less the expenses of the bank, is the profit of banking. To this is added commissions on collections and exchange, and on the sale of securities. If local bonds are issued, either by the public or by industrial enterprises, a local bank may subscribe for the entire issue with the view of selling them to customers at a small profit. Sometimes, in spite of the low interest which first-class bonds usually bear, they are retained as permanent investments of the bank, because, in case of sudden calls for money from deposits in unexpected amounts, first-class bonds are highly available as securities upon which the bank itself may borrow money to pay depositors. In cases of sudden demands for money, country banks frequently have to borrow largely of city banks to pay depositors, although ordinary demands are usually foreseen and prepared for. It is quite evident, however, that if a bank owes $100,000 to depositors, of which $75,000 is loaned out and