Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-01-18


that took place to the West few
years ago, which, as we all know,
was but the last of long series of
similar westward waves that have
been flowing across the country at
fairly regular intervals for the last
century. Wonderful stories were
told of the rich black soil of the
prairies, waiting only for the pillow
of the farmer to tickle it into a
bounteous laugh of all the good
things of the world. Hosts of farm
ers from the middle and western
states who had just begun in
strange, underlined way to feel that
their present surroundings were un-
desirable, were lured to Dakota,
Kansas or Nebraska by the siren
song that Uncle Sam is rich enough
to give us all farm" They did
not then see what many of them
have since learned, that Uncle
Sam" is simply another name for
the possessing classes, to which the
farmers will some time discover that
they no longer belong. Had they
realized these facts they might have
called to mind that old proverb to
Beware of the Greeks when they
bear gifts" and would have looked
with suspicion upon the wondrous
generosity of the homestead law. "
But they can comfort themselves
with the fact that they were not the
only ones who were deceived by
this apparent bounty. 1t was hailed
by the great majority of the social
students of the world, including, |
am sorry to say, not few Socialists,
as a restoration of the class of in
dependent farmers" But in little
more than a decade these indepen-
dent farmers, the recipients of so
wonderful gift, are in almost open
revolt against the economic condi-
tions in which they find themselves,
and turning blindly toward free sill
yer, popular banks, fiat money, and
a hundred and one other economic
vagaries in the hope of securing re-
lief. What has happened1
Let us take a look at the territory
referred to as it was at the beginning
of the eighties. Thousands, yes,
millions of acres of fertile land were
as yet untouched by the plow. The
country had just recovered from the
commercial crisis of 1873 and was
in stage of great prosperity"
The capitalists of America had just
discovered and begun to apply on
an extensive scale a new method of
organizing their business. This
was called the corporation. Not
that corporations had been pre-
viously unknown. On the contrary
they had been common enough in
some lines of industry for more than
a century. But they had been hith-
erto largely confined to certain pc
culiar lines of industry, such as rail
roads, telegraphs, canals, steamship
lines, etc. They had as yet not
been largely introduced into ordi-
nary business. But in the years
from 1880 to 'S8 more charters were
granted for corporations than in any
equal number of years before or
since. Thousands of industries that
had been previously conducted as
individual enterprises were now
turned into corporations. This had
exactly the same effect as the inven-
tion of new labor-saving machine.
1t made it possible through better
organization of industry to produce
more goods with less labor.
Now it is a peculiarity of the sys-
TEN under which we are at present
living that since the laborers are
only given a small portion of what
they produce, they naturally cannot