Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1875-05-28
Frauds and Farmers.

An easy but envinblo Immortality awaits
that grange or farmers union which will
successfully divert the agricultural attention
from the mighty misories of railroad monop-
oily, to the petty frauds which infest our farm
ers' lives like vermin in beggars filthy gar
ments; they are more swindled in petty ways
than any other class in our communities.
This proceeds partly from an Impotence of
slow returns and n belief in short cuts to
wealth. Commonly the farmer takes but
one paper. weekly; often he takes none.
In the former case he religiously reads every
line, advertisements and all, and unless his
paper be carefully edited. there ii is that the
trap is baited for his inveiglcment. New
seeds that yield impossiby, new breeds Of
stock and fowls, new varieties of fruit mirac-
ulous potatoes, oats that stand like bean
poles and culver with golden harvcsts, corn
which produces fifty ears to the stalk--he
hears of all these wcalth-bringing prodigies
he sees them certified In the most authentic
way. he believes In them implicitly and ia
vests in them extravagantly.
If the farmer takes no paper at all, and
conducts his affairs entirely by the uuaided
force of natural talent, him the "ngont"
spies out, lies in wait for. pounces upon, aud
grows fat by despoiling. 1 Say the agent is u
fruit pcddler; he exhibits his magniicently
colorcd Autographs OF impossible peaches,
apples and pears, or goes around with carpet
bags filed with samples of hypertrophied
California fruit preserved in spirits to point
his moral and adorn his tale. The farmer
buys strawberry plants by sample and finds
he has secured fine growing crop Of clover
roots. We have known an agent to make a
clever living by going round the country SELL
ing plants Of that pretty solanaceOus herb,
tho physilts aikekesgi, as new and valuable
variety of winter-ripening cherry.
Even If the farmer escapes being victim-
lied by the agent and advertisement. he Is
still liable to be caught by the insidious wilos
Of tho local congressman and the deceitfui
packages Of the agricultural bureau. One
cannot always be upon the quI viUe. and Inn
agine the anguishes which await the farmer.
who, going away rom home upon business,
finds on returning that his son has doctored
thu sheep or the cows according to receipts
found in the agricultural report and his wife
has sowed her flower beds with seeds from
Commissioner Wattsi
1t occurs TO us that the oranges have n
wide field for the exercise of a very signal
usefulness. Here arc tho abuses which they
can successfully attack. and which the whole
country will thank them Tor abating. II
they will ferret out these fraudulent agents
and swindling advertisements and expose
them upon all occasions, they will remit u
good many sturdy knaves to honest industry
while saving tho farmers an annual sum of
money absolutely lost. the aggregate of
which would suffice to endow half dozen
colleges upon the most liberal scale.
II in addition to hunting individual SWIM
dies, the grange should make determined
war upon the ignorance which renders such
swindling prosperous, they will be doing a
work of national education quite out OF the
reach of school boards and college corpora
tons. II is probable that there is nothing
which the collective American people need
so urgently to learn rs the simple fact that
two and two make fouri two and two cannot
mako FIVE ut any time, in any place, nor un-
der any conceivable circumstances, The
collective people can only learn this by each
person realizing II for himself individually.
Ignorance Of this principle underlies pretty
much all mistakes, financial. political, NOR
al, rs we'll MS agricultural. If a grange can
impress all the farmers connected with i
with the flct that, no matter what seeds he
plants, ho cannot grow twenty barrels Of
corn on an acre of land capable OF producing
4. IA 1. e. as,f,
convincing him that railroads cannot be
made to run Mt loss, that protective tariffs
are a burden instead of n protection, and
that rng-money is n robbery of honest indus
try.-E1. .''.