Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-01-04

Reprinted by permission from a
copyrighted pamphlet entitled So
cialism and Farmers, by A. M.
Simons, copies of which may be had
at S cents each from Charles II.
Kerr & Co., publishers, SO Fifth
avenue, Chicago.
1t is not many years since all that
was asked by the farmer to make him
prosperous" was plenty of rain and
sunshine and no storms or insect
pests. To be sure he always declared
that times were better" when the
particular party to which he belonged
was in control, but still he never
really thought that politics had very
much to do with his success or fail
ure as farmer. If he was saving,
industrious and fairly intelligent in
farm management he could usually
reckon on being able to stop work at
fifty and enjoy fairly comfortable,
peaceful life on the income from the
farm that he had paid for in his
younger days. The farmer class as
a whole led a rather contented, if
somewhat monotonous life, and
found little fault or took little inter
est in social and labor problems.
Today, on the contrary, murmurs
of unrest are heard in every agricul-
tural community and at times these
swell into a fierce outburst of des-
pairing indignation as conditions
seem to be almost unbearable. These
complaints, seem to bear no percep-
tible relation to climate, storms, To-
cality, insect pests, or indeed any of
the natural calamities that we're the
scourge of our fathers. From the
deserted farms of chilly New Eng
land to the vacant and overgrown
plantations of the sunny south, and
across the mortage- cursed and rack
rented farms of the Mississippi val
ley and the western plains 10 the
overloaded vineyards and orchards
of California, with their luscious
e-giving fruit rotting for lack of a
market, there comes a chorus of
complaints of new burdens not trace
able to defects of soil or climate or
due to insect or animal scourges, yet
which are plunging the farmers of
America into greater misery and suf-
fering than ever followed the wake
of New England frost, southern
drouth, Kansas cyclone or Califor-
MIA earthquake.
There comes year when crops
are good, rains have been plenty and
sunshine benefcient and the farmer
looks forth upon granaries full to
bursting, upon herds of cattle and
droves of swine fat to the market,
and he thinks of the long needed and
planned addition he will build to the
house, the new buggy he will buy, or
of any of the hundred and one little
things that rarest, dearest thing in
this day of fats, apartments and ten
ements-a home. But when he goes
to sell his products and to change
them into the desired pleasures and
necessities he finds that he is the
victim of new calamity as merci-
less and unavoidable as the long
feared terrors of food or droutb. A
financial panic has started in some
distant city and III a single week he
sees half his Possessions swept away
by falling prices,
His orchards bend to breaking,
his fields are yellow sea of richness
his vines a purple wall of luscious
beauty, but when he would sell their
fruitage to secure the things that he
can use he is told that so much has
been produced that his products car
not be sold, and hence they must ro'
where they lay. But the same papel
that brings him the news of thi'
"overproduction" tells him also o
men, women and children suffering
and dying by thousands in the slum
of the great cities for lack of thu
very things that are rotting in th'