People's voice., 1900-08-09

The writer's memory runs back less
than forty years, yet he can remember
when almost all of the manufactured
articles used in any community, such as
wagons, shoes, cloth, barrels and cloth
ing were made in little shops and facto-
ries in each community or in the home.
Then the person engaged in such manu-
tacture owned the plant and machinery
used and was independent. All this has
changed. Improved methods of pro-
duction requiring costly machinery have
made the owner Of machinery all-power-
ful and has reduced those who produce
to position of dependence. This con-
dition is absolute, the change is COM
plete. The employe in a cotton mill or
a shoe factory is absolutely creature Of
circumstance and dependent. He has
nothing to sell but his labor.
Expensive machinery is absolutely nee
essary to the production.of every article
and the owner of the machine is master
not only Of the product, but Of the pro-
ducer. OF what interest is this to the
farmer reader of the VOICE? He is not
subject to such conditions. He is not
dependent upon any owner of expensive
machinery necessary to the preparing
and marketing of his product. Let us
see, if he is not. The writer can also
remember when wheat was cut with a
cradle, threshed with fail and ground
at the custom mill for one-tenth, when
the shoemaker and the wagonmaker and
the tanner were paid in articles produced
on the farm and which could be used by
them to eat or wear, when the little
money needed WIS obtained by hauling
butter and cheese to Buffalo, NY,
where it was sold to a man having a
little stall in the city market, who in
turn sold it to those who consumed it.
No expensive machinery was involved
in any of those transactions. The farm
er who led this life did not at any point
come in contact with any man or set of
men who could levy tribute upon his
labor, upon whom he was dependent for
the production or marketing Of his crop.
All that has now changed and the same
process Of evolution that has made
ninety-nine out of every hundred en-
gagged in manufacturing, dependent up
on the other one is now bringing the
same results in agriculture. The process
has gone farther than will at first ap-
pear. Given some one thing necessary to
the production of wheat and allow some
one man or set Of men to have absolute
control of that one thing and they will
take from the wheat or its selling price,
which is the same thing, all above the
bare cost of living to those who produce
it. Ownership Of the land is not neces-
sary. Ownership Of only one necessary
article Of production is sufficient. An
opportunity at one point to levy
tribute is sufficient. That one
poiat, that one element of production is
the railroad which is now necessity fer
the marketing of not only wheat, but
almost all other products. Last January
the rate on wheat to Kansas City was
raised more than twenty per cent. above
what it has been for decade or more
aud this in the face of the fact that ow-
ing to the use OF larger cars, larger en-
gines and improved methods the cost Of
hauling that wheat is less than seventy.
five per cent Of what it was ten wears
ago, in face of the fact that all the roads
doing business in this territory made
large profits last year and of the further
fact that the enormous business this veal
would, at the old rate, give unusually
large profits. Add to this tribute that
levied by the elevators, which work il
conjunction with the railroads, and tht
burden is enormous.
The aggregate value Of all grants
bonds and other subsidies given to rail
roads in Kansas added to the money
obtained upon mortgages upon them i.