"If you fellows are going to do that then I go out of binder twine this season. I won't handle a pound of it."
"Not even to supply the farmers who don't belong to our Association?"
"That's what I said. You're going to make a convenience of me when you rob me of all my cash business. The only business I could do would be with farmers who wanted credit."
Did the Grain Growers say: "That's their lookout, then. Let them join us or go twineless"? No. They decided to bring in their co-operative shipment as planned, but to allow the merchant to handle it on commission in order to prevent any injustice to the other farmers.
Incidents like that can be recorded from all over the country. It does not take very many of them to compel the honest conviction that equity of citizenship for all the people in every walk of life means more to these farmers than a high-sounding shibboleth. That being so, it becomes difficult to accept the slur of utter selfishness—the idea that the farmers are auto-intoxicated, a pig-headed lot who cause trouble for nothing. It is very hard to believe that Everybody Else is good and kind and sincere and true, affectionate one to another with brotherly love, not slothful in business; for one knows that the best of us need the prayers of our mothers!
When these Grain Growers started out they did not know very much about what was going on. They had their suspicions; but that was all. To-day they know. Their business activities have taught them many things while providing the resources for the fight that is shaping unless the whole monopolistic system lets go its stranglehold.
Yes, the farmers do talk about freedom in buying and selling; also about tariff reform. They point out that there are criminal laws to jail bankers who dared to charge from twenty-five per cent. to forty-two per cent. for the use of money; that food and clothing and the necessaries of life are the same as money and that high tariff protection which fosters combines and monopolies is official discrimination against the many in favor of the few; that there are other and more just forms of taxation and that all old systems of patronage and campaign funds have got to go if the grave problems of these grave times are to be met successfully.
It is no old-time "Hayseed" who is discussing these things. It is a New Farmer altogether. The Farmers' Movement is no fancy of the moment either, but the product of Time itself. It is a condition which has developed in our rural life as the corolla of increased opportunities for education. The Farmer to-day is a different man to what he was ten years ago—indeed, five years ago.
It has taken fifteen years of bitter struggle for the Western farmers to win to their present position and now that they are far enough along their Trail to Better Things to command respect they are going to say what they think without fear or favor. They believe the principles for which they stand to be fundamental to national progress.
If there is to be any attempt to cram the old order of things down the people's throats; if, under cloak of all this present talk of winning the war, of new eras and of patriotism, profiteers should scheme and plan fresh campaigns—then will there be such a wrathful rising of the people as will sweep everything before it. In the forefront of that battle will stand the rugged legions of the organized farmers.