With a whoop the association was organized, Judge Wallingford was made its president, and with great enthusiasm was authorized to go ahead and spend all of his own money that he cared to lay out for the benefit of the association. Only one trifling duty was laid upon the members. President Wallingford introduced an endless chain letter. It was brief. It was concise. It told in the fewest possible words just why the Farmers' Commercial Association had been formed and what it was expected to do, laying especial stress upon the fact that there were to be no initiation fees and no dues, no money to be paid for anything! All that the members were to do was to join, and when enough were in, to demand one dollar and a half for their wheat. It was a glittering proposition, for there was no trouble and no expense and no risk, with much to gain. Every one of the ninety-odd who gathered that night in Wallingford's barn was to write three or more of these letters to wheat-growing acquaintances, and each recipient of a letter was told that the only thing which need be done to enroll himself as a member of the order was to write three more such letters and send in his name to Horatio Raven, Secretary.
Horatio Raven himself was there. There was a barrel of good, hard cider on tap in the barn, and every few minutes Mr. Raven could be seen conducting one or two acquaintances quietly over to the cellar, where there were other things on tap. Cigars were passed around, and the good cheer which was provided became so inextricably mingled with the enthusiasm which had been aroused, that no farmer could tell which was which. It only sufficed that when they went away each one was profoundly convinced that J. Rufus Wallingford was the Moses who should lead the farmers of America out of their financial Wilderness.
During the next two or three days nearly three hundred letters left Truscot and Mapes counties, inviting nearly three hundred farmers in the great wheat belt, extending from the Rockies to the Appalachians, to take full sixty per cent. more for their produce than the average price they had always been receiving, to invite others to receive like benefits, and all to accept this boon without money and without price. It was personal solicitation from one man to another who knew him, and the first flood that went out reached every wheat-growing State in the Union. Within a week, names and requests for further information began pouring in upon Horatio Raven, Secretary, and the card index drawers in the filing cabinet, originally bought in jest, became of actual service. One, then two, then three girls were installed. A pamphlet was printed explaining the purpose of the Farmers' Commercial Association, and these were sent to all "members," J. Rufus Wallingford furnishing both the printing and the postage.
Through the long winter the president of that great association was constantly upon the road, always in his corduroy suit and his broad felt hat, with his trousers tucked neatly into his seal-leather boots. His range was from Pennsylvania to Nebraska and from Minnesota to Texas, and everywhere his destination was some branch nucleus of the Farmers' Commercial Association where meetings had been arranged for him. Each night he addressed some body of skeptical farmers who came wondering, who saw the impressive and instantly convincing "Judge" Wallingford; who, listening, caught a touch of that magnetic thrill with which he always imbued his auditors, and who went away enthusiastic to carry to still further reaches the great work that he had planned. By the holiday season he had visited a dozen States and had addressed nearly a hundred sub-organizations. In each of these he gave the chain letters a new start, and the December meeting of the central organization of the Farmers' Commercial Association was also a Christmas celebration in the barn of that progressive and self-sacrificing and noble farmer, J. Rufus Wallingford.
It was a huge "family affair," held two nights before Christmas so as not to interfere with the Baptist Church at Three Roads or the Presbyterian Church at Miller's Crossing, and the great barn was trimmed with wreaths and festoons of holly from floor to rafters. At one end was a gigantic Christmas tree, from the branches of which glowed a myriad of electric lights and sparkled innumerable baubles of vivid coloring and metallic luster. Handsome presents had been provided for every man, woman and child, and down the extent of the wide center had been spread two enormous, long tables upon which was placed food enough to feed a small army; huge turkeys and all that went with them. At the head of the ladies' table sat Mrs. Wallingford, glittering in her diamonds, the first time she had worn them since coming into this environment, and at the head of the men's table, resplendent in a dinner coat and with huge diamond studs flashing from his wide, white shirt bosom, sat the giver of all these bounties, Judge J. Rufus Wallingford, president of the vast Farmers' Commercial Association. He was flushed with triumph, and he told them so at the proper moment. Beyond his most sanguine hopes the Farmers' Commercial Association had spread and flourished in every State, nay, in every community where wheat was grown, and the time was rapidly approaching when the farmer, now turned business man, would be able to get the full value of his investment of money, time and toil. Moreover, they would destroy the birds of prey, feathers, bones and beaks, fledgelings, eggs and nests.
Around the table, at this point, Horatio Raven, Secretary, passed a sheaf of reports upon the various successful deals that Wallingford had made, each one showing a profit of five thousand dollars on a ten-thousand-dollar investment. The secret facts of the case were that fortune had favored Wallingford tremendously. By one of those strange runs of luck which sometimes break the monotony of persistent gambling disasters, he had won not less than five out of every six of the continuous deals intrusted to Fox & Fleecer. The failures he kept to himself, and Ham Tinkle added to the furore that the proofs of this success created by rising in his place and advising them how, upon Wallingford's certain and sure advance information of the market, he himself had been able to turn his modest little two hundred dollars into seven hundred during the past three months, with the profits still piling up.
But J. Rufus Wallingford, resuming, saw such profits vanishing in the future, for by the aid of the Farmers' Commercial Association he intended to wipe out the iniquitous grain and produce exchange, and, in fact, all gambling in food products throughout the United States. The scope of the Farmers' Commercial Association was much broader, much more far-reaching than even he had imagined when he at first conceived it. When they were ready they would not only establish a firm cash basis for wheat, but they would wipe this festering mass of corruption, called the Board of Trade, off the face of the earth by the simple process of taking all its money away from it. With their certain knowledge of what the price of wheat would be, when the time was ripe they would go into the market and, themselves, by their aggregate profits, would break every man who was in the business of manipulating prices on wheat, on oats and corn and live stock. Why, nearly one million names were now enrolled in the membership of the association, and to these million names circulars explaining in detail the plans of the organization had been mailed at a cost in postage alone of nearly ten thousand dollars. This expense he had cheerfully borne himself, in his devotion to the great work of reformation. Not one penny had been paid by any other member of the organization for the furtherance of this project. He had spent nearly twenty thousand dollars in travel and other expenses, but the market had paid for it, and he was not one penny loser by his endeavors. Even if he were, that would not stop him. He would sell every government bond and every share of industrial and railroad stock that he owned, he would even mortgage his farm, if necessary, to complete this organization and make it the powerful and impregnable factor in agricultural commerce that he had intended it to be. It was his dream, his ambition, nay, his determined purpose, to leave behind him this vast organization as an evidence that his life had not been spent in vain; and if he could only see the wheat gamblers put out of that nefarious business, and the farmers of the United States coming, after all these toiling generations, into their just and honest dues, he would die with peace in his heart and a smile upon his lips, even though he went to a pauper's grave!
There were actual tears in his eyes as he closed with these words, and his voice quivered. From the foot of the table Blackie Daw was watching with a curious smile that was almost a sardonic grin. From the head of the parallel table Mrs. Wallingford was watching him with a pallor that deepened as he went on, but no one noticed these significant indications, and as J. Rufus Wallingford sat down a mighty cheer went up that made every branch of the glittering Christmas tree dance and quiver.
He was a wonderful man, this Wallingford, a genius, a martyr, a being made in his entirety of the milk of human kindness and brotherly love; but this rapidly growing organization that he had formed was more wonderful still. They could see as plain as print what it would do for them; they could see even plainer than print how, with the certain knowledge of the price to which wheat would eventually rise, they could safely dabble in fictitious wheat themselves, and by their enormous aggregate winnings, obliterate all boards of trade. It was a conception Titanic in its immensity, perfect in its detail, amazing in its flawlessness, and not one among them who listened but went home that night—J. Rufus Wallingford's seal-leather pocketbook in his pocket, J. Rufus Wallingford's box of lace handkerchiefs on his wife's lap, J. Rufus Wallingford's daintily dressed French doll in his little girl's arm, J. Rufus Wallingford's toy engine in his little boy's hands—but foresaw, not as in a dream but as in a concrete reality that needed only to be clutched, the future golden success of the Farmers' Commercial Association; and on the forehead of that success was emblazoned in letters of gold:
"$1.50 WHEAT!"