, 1900-05-03
NEW FARMERS
KANSAS PLAN OF MUTUAL HELP
Business Organization Without Polite
sBeing Formed to Raise Price of
Wheat and Other Farm Froducts-Co-


Wheat and other Farm Products Go
Operation a Success.
A dispatch from Abilene, Kansas, to
the Chicago Record says:
Kansas farmers seem likely to enter
on another farmers alliance movement
under another name. They have for
years since the disruption of the old
organization been without any method
of getting together. and the starting
of a new lodge is taking with great
favor. In this county has begun the
organization of the knights of the
Soil, a mutual organization to which
only farmers are eligible and which
proposes to act as a gigantic trust for
the management of the affairs in
which the farmers are vitality inter
ested. The first lodge in the state
will be in operation in a few days and
there are hundreds of farmers in adj
joining counties ready to follow it with
further lodges.
The institution Is very new Not
more than two months ago it was
started in Iowa, but there are now
1900 members and organizers are
working in this state, Iowa, Nebraska
n the Dakotas. The objects are diff
ferent from any other institution
among farmers that has been organ
lied in the West, and If II attains the
requisite membership it will have a
wide effect on the business interests.
1t is particularly intended to extend
the organization through the grain
growing states and TO make the union
of the farmers so strong that it can
command the prices of grain and ON
pc the holding of grain for sixty or
ninety days over the whole middle
West. To do this there will be needed
a large reserve fund, and it is pro-
posed to supply this from the lodge dues
n assessments.
The chief organizer, who is here
making arrangements for the opening
of the first lodge in the state, said of
the objects and purposes of the insti-
tuition: The Knights of the Soil *
strictly a lodge. 1t is IA secret organi-
cation and its purpose is to enable the
farmer TO combat the Industrial trusts
that are pitted against him. Fol this
reason it Is sometimes denominated II
farmers trust, though that is a mis-
1t is merely Il friendly union
by which there shall be concerted ac-
ton on the principal business inter
ests of the day.
How may this be done? Why, IN
this way, for example: Some poor
farmer inds that he must, for one
cause or another, sell his crop on n
low market. He realizes that if he
could hold it for IL little while he
could make n fair profit, while If he
Is compelled to sell it off-hand he must
make nothing or at most n small
profit. Now there is where H. farm
ers' organization comes in with its
beneficient assistance. Through it the
poor farmer will be able to borrow
from his richer neighbor a sum suf-
icient to tide him over the time of
need and the lodge will see that the
lender is amply protected. Likewise,
by this mutual agreement TO hold for
a higher market the farmers will be
able to regulate to n degree the
market rather than have the prices
that they are > receive for their grain
regulated by It market manipulators
in Chicago and Liverpool. 1t will
give them more of the necessities of
life and will protect them from the
violent ups and downs of the markets
which take from them a large portion
of their earnings when they need it
most.
a organization of this sort is abso-
lutely essential and | believe hat it
fills a long-felt want. The eagerness
with which the farmers are taking
hold of It indicates that they think so
as well. 1t Is not the purpose of the
organization to dabble in politics. That
vas what killed the Grange and the
Farmers Alliance, which purposed in
their beginnings much the same things
that are the objects of this o%rganiZa-
tion. 1t is the rock IN which the
combinations of the farmers of the
West have split and it is our intention
to avoid 1t as far as possible.