Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1903-10-30
How the Farmer is Exploited.


Thos Elmer WILL Principal American Socialist College Wichita
We must reach the farmer He needs Social
i ism and the Socialist movement needs him
Neither can win without the other.
True, there are farmers anG farmers There
is the capitalist farmer who has stake in the
present system. He is rich, he employs cap
italstic methods and is growing richer
What of him? He stands alongside other cap
italists and sees through their eyes. Capitalists
have become Socialists. Witness Owen, Engels,
Singer and Wiltshire. Usually, capitalists op
pose Socialism.
Like any other capitalist, the capitalist farmer
may view the subject broadly and become
Socialist. He may view it narrowly and op
pose Socialism.
Let us omit the capitalist farmer from our
peesent consideration.
The vast majority of farmers are not capital
lists. They are tenants-tenants either in fac
or in essence.
The tenant in fact tls land to which another
holds the title the tenant in essence tills land
to which he holds the title but from which
others skim the cream
mess universal history.
The law of rent takes care of the tenant.
What is the law of rent? The law that, for the
unprivileged tenant, the best land in the COM
munity is no better than the wors. which must
be used. If the worst which must be used
yields ten bushels per acre and the best yields
hundred, the tenant on the best gets ten bushels.
of AL tLa
And the ten bushels wage of the tenant bal
ances the .$I.oo per day wage of the hireling.
They are proletarians together. There is moth
ing in the present system for either of them.
They should unite" They "have nothing
to lose but their chans;' they /" have a world
to gain"
Wage earners strike for nine and eight hou RS
per day. The farmer works twelve, fourte en-
and sixteen hours.
Woman and child labor are evils in the city.
So they are in the country. The v,orhan's
work is never done and the child works from
the hour he can carry chips or pull weeds till
the grave receives him. The farmers family
suffers through lite an isolation which, to the
slum dweller would be intolerable. City work
ers and unemployed actually prefer death in.
their tenements to such an existence.
AS to exploitation, the farmer is exploited in
every economic relation as borrower, buyer and
seller.
He is s'milked like his cows, shorn like his
sheep, plucked like his poultry, pillaged like
his bee hive, drained like his lard, and worked
like his horses"
Bankers, railroads, sock-yards, packing
houses, creameries and fakirs re member him in
their PRAYERS. Trusts to the right of him. trusts
to the left of him, trusts all about him show
their tender solicitude. AT the end of the av.
erage year the average farmer finds, if lucky,
that he is about where he started He proves
himself "a proletarian. He earns the "wages Of
subsistence, the ''full dinner pail the COM
p ,nsation of slave, OK and mule
The farmer knows he is robbed. He says so,
and says i. without mincing words.
But he has not stopped with talking. He
has tried vigorously and repeatedly, to stop the
stealing.
He entered the Greenback movement, the
Grange, the Alliance and the Populst move
ment.
Rivers in Asia start hopefully, but dsappea
They are swallowed by the desert sauds. The