Norwich bulletin., 1911-02-11

and forty million bushels more we l raised: and $252.Q 100000 less we got for raising them. Of all the farm crops of tho country, only hay, pota- toes, haxseed and barley are trifie higher than . year ego. Even in these, the increase is nominal rather than real. The average farm value Of DO tatoes through the United States. for 55.5 cents in 1910,-a gain of six tsnths of q cent per bushel. The av- craze yield of potatoes through the country having been about 100 bushels to the acre. this makes the average increase in value of crop, sixty cents cost the average farmer more than sixty cents an acre in labor and seed and fertilizer over 1909.
 Altogether, taking all the principal farm crops, wheat, corn. oats, barley, tatoes and tobacco, while there was 8 very much larger amount produced in 1910 than in 1909. the total value of the whole lot to the farmers on their farms was $236,000.0o0 less than the value of the smaller crops of the same products to the farmers on their farms in 19o9.
 The farmer had to pay moro for labor in 1910 than in 1909: he had to pay more TOT IeTClIlZcT. ne uaQ tO Day moro for pretty nearly everything he consumed:-but he got $236, COG, 900 less for his bigger and better crops! He ought to have got, on the basis of 190s's prices, about s236.000,000 more. This means that he really lost s470,- 100000, as compared with 1909. Did you save it, MT. Consumer? Or did you gobble it, Mir. Middleman? I'm not, here and now, undertaking to say which of you has it. But I am under taking to say that whichever assumes to hold the farmer in any smallest de- gree responsible for the high prices of 1910 is a literal and lineal descendant of Ananias, birth-marked with mem dacity!
 confess that it makes mo mad to the bottom of my boots to have the whit as much from the high prices prevalent in 1910 as any other man. held accountable for them You might as well hold the man who is swimming for his life in q Connecticut river freshet responsible for the dam age done on the banks by high water. You might as well hold the man who has his skull factured by falling brick responsible for the poor mortar put in the chimney. You might as well hold February fog responsible for zero weather the December previous.
 Doubtless it's human nature always to ''blame it on somebody else" But 1t certainly seems to be like rubbing 1t in'' to cut Mir. Farmer about $470,- 100000 in one year on his fair pay for his goode and then blame him for keeping prices up.
 Furthermore and more important, 1t surely seems as if it were time for us farmers to wake up to the fact that in the business battle we are, unani- mously and everywhere, the under dog in the fight" We have very little voice in regard to what we shall get for that which we sell: we have ab- soluteiy no voice in what we must pay for that which we buy. Laws if not made in the interests of Big Busi- ness, are regularly so construed by tie cour:s. And Big Business means simply the bullying and beating of Little Business. While other forms of labor organize and force better con- ditions and better pay, we farmers scatter about like seven million sepa- rate Ishmaels, each with his hand against everybody else, and everybody else against him.
 Nv name isn't Moses. I'm not com missioned to lead anybody to the Promised Land. don't even feel perfectly sure which way that Prom lSed Land bears, by compass But believe there is one. If I didn't [ should go mad in hopeless despair. I'm sure there's an East, and a Dawn and grand, new Day. There is there must be, a turn in the tide Per haps it may not flood when or where l expect.
 But, while the tired waves. yain]y
 breaking,
 Seem here no painful inch to gain. Far back. through creek5 and inlets
 Comes silent, flooding in. the main." ;"
 THE FARMER.