The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1892-08-19
TILlERs AND ToILERs.

4
WIN Thsy Continue to Toll without Hope
While Drones Feast.
The reports indicate that there is
likely to be good harvest as gem
eral thing, in the United States this
year; and besides this some of tho.
big dailies ara rejoicing that owing
to variety of happenings abroad.
there is prospect of good prices.
All of this looks encouraging for the
farmers don't it? Now. / never gam
BILE. writes Spokeshave in the Journal
of the X. of l.. but if l did / think l
would like to bet that if there be good
crops, and if good prices be obtained
abroad for the exported farm produce.
the farmers will be little if any the
better off for it In some way or other
and by thoroughly legal means, every
extra dollar which the farmers would
be justified in considering as rightfully
theirs will find its way into the Golfers
of the railways. the banks and the
loan companies. If the harvest prog
| HoS1i0aoiouS GuFu Out 10 %
correct about one year from
now moro or less the directors
| of these companies will be telling of q
| prosperous years business ana they
will be congratulating themselves upon
the profitable working of certain
inner wheels in which these directors
are Interested; but the books of the
registry Offices will not tell the tale of
many mortgages lifted. When the
papers tell OF crop failures ! don't
waste time writing letters of condol-
ence to my farmer fMends; reserve
all my sympathy for the real sufferers.
the usurers who are likely to find
their business of farmer -shearing less
profitable. The farmer must live
somehow and bare living is about
all the confederacy of usurers allow
him in any year. be the crops good
or bad. True they manage to utilize
the years of short crops to fasten
their hooks more firmly into him. so
that a year or two of good harvests
will not enable him to escape from
their clutches. You may put this
down as certain. If there be good
harvest in America and high prices
in Europe and if the farmers manage
to keep any of the money the
good crops and high prices
bring it will be because the schemes
OF the fellows have been speaking of
go wrong in some way. Don't you
suppose now that think the farmers
ara fools beyond all other men, be-
cause with the power to keep them
selves they have patiently submitted
to perennial robbery. They average
Intellectually just about as high as the
rest of the community-or they would
did the rest not have Chauncey Depew,
Elliot F. Sheppard and a few other
preternaturally clever fellows to boost
up their average The farmers are
not one particle more likely to get
sheared without knowing it than are
the rest of the community. The work.
ingmen in the cities needn't laugh at
the farmer, who gets up at daylighto or
before it and plows drags cultivates
hoes, harvests fights bugs weevil,
cut worms. ETC.. all for the
benefit Of the corporate monop-
olies. The farmer might just as
well laugh at the workingmen, who
work early and late and set their
wives and children to work defraud-
ing them of their womanliness and of
their childhood, pinch. save and stint
both body and mind fight their en-
ployers for bigger wages. live in
tenement houses and live lives scarce
above the level of brute existence.
and all that they may have more to
hand over to the landlord and money
monopoIist. 10 be sure, both the
farmers and workingmen have been
too busy shouting, hurrahing parad-
ing and jawing for their precious old
parties to have had time to think of
their own conditions and in this
presidential year they will. only too
many Of them. have a return of their
| quadrennial Stiffness. so l don't know
that they will be any more likely now
than formerly 10 find out why it is
that the present years good crops
will not benefit any one who has
| producers right to he benefited by
them. True there are few farmers
and workingmen who have. gotten
their eyes open ana they are engaged
/, in an effort to awaken their fellows
and. while l hope they will succeed
| l know how sound is the sleep they
! seek To- disturb. However until the
| farmers farm for themselves and the
workingmen work for themselves and
let the leeches go dig. hammer or
| drown. the drones will continue to
| feast and the workers toll on without
hope, and neither good crops nor high
wages will make them anything but
more profitable servants for their
usurer masters ',