“Doan you min’ dat, honey. Brer Fox pressed dis rabbit so hard he des bleeged to clim’ a tree.”

I am pressed so hard to-day by your commands that I am just “bleeged” to make a speech, and so I proceed. I heartily invoke God’s guidance in what I say, that I shall utter no word to soil this temple of His, and no sentiment not approved in His wisdom; and as for you, when the time comes—as it will come—when you prefer barbecued shote to raw orator, and feel that you can be happier at that table than in this forum, just say the word and I will be with you heart and soul!

I am tempted to yield to the gaiety of this scene, to the flaunting banners of the trees, the downpouring sunshine, the garnered plenty over there, this smiling and hospitable crowd, and, throwing serious affairs aside, to speak to you to-day as the bird sings—without care and without thought. I should be false to myself and to you if I did, for there are serious problems that beset our State and our country that no man, facing, as I do this morning, a great and intelligent audience, can in honor or in courage disregard. I shall attempt to make no brilliant speech—but to counsel with you in plain and simple words, beseeching your attention and your sympathy as to the dangers of the present hour, and our duties and our responsibilities.

At Saturday noon in any part of this county you may note the farmer going from his field, eating his dinner thoughtfully and then saddling his plow-horse, or starting afoot and making his way to a neighboring church or schoolhouse. There he finds from every farm, through every foot-path, his neighbors gathering to meet him. What is the object of this meeting? It is not social, it is not frolic, it is not a pic-nic—the earnest, thoughtful faces, the serious debate and council, the closed doors and the secret session forbid this assumption. It is a meeting of men who feel that in spite of themselves their affairs are going wrong—of free and equal citizens who feel that they carry unequal burdens—of toilers who feel that they reap not the just fruits of their toil—of men who feel that their labor enriches others while it leaves them poor, and that the sweat of their bodies, shed freely under God’s command, goes to clothe the idle and the avaricious in purple and fine linen. This is a meeting of protest, of resistance. Here the farmer meets to demand, and organize that he may enforce his demand, that he shall stand equal with every other class of citizens—that laws discriminating against him shall be repealed—that the methods oppressing him shall be modified or abolished—and that he shall be guaranteed that neither government nor society shall abridge, by statute or custom, his just and honest proportion of the wealth he created, but that he shall be permitted to garner in his barns, and enjoy by his hearthstone, the full and fair fruits of his labor. If this movement were confined to Elbert, if this disturbing feeling of discontent were shut in the limits of your county lines, it would still demand the attention of the thoughtful and patriotic. But, as it is in Elbert, so it is in every county in Georgia—as in Georgia, so it is in every State in the South—as in the South, so in every agricultural State in the Union. In every rural neighborhood, from Ohio to Texas, from Michigan to Georgia, the farmers, riding thoughtful through field and meadow, seek ten thousand schoolhouses or churches—the muster grounds of this new army—and there, recounting their wrongs and renewing their pledges, send up from neighborhoods to county, from county to State, and State to Republic, the measure of their strength and the unyielding quality of their determination. The agricultural army of the Republic is in motion. The rallying drumbeat has rolled over field and meadow, and from where the wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf, and the clover carpets the earth, and the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains—everywhere that patient man stands above the soil, or bends about the furrow, the farmers are ready in squads and companies and battalions and legions to be led against what they hold to be an oppression that honest men would not deserve, and that brave men would not endure. Let us not fail to comprehend the magnitude and the meaning of this movement. It is no trifling cause that brings the farmers into such determined and widespread organization as this. It is not the skillful arts of the demagogue that has brought nearly two million farmers into this perfect and pledge-bound society—but it is a deep and abiding conviction that, in political and commercial economy of the day, he is put at a disadvantage that keeps him poor while other classes grow rich, and that bars his way to prosperity and independence. General Toombs once said that the farmer, considered the most conservative type of citizenship, is really the most revolutionary. That the farmers of France, flocking to the towns and cities from the unequal burdens of their farms, brought about the French Revolution, and that about once in every century the French peasant raided the towns. Three times the farmers of England have captured and held London. It was the farmers of Mecklenburg that made the first American declaration, and Putnam left his plow standing in the furrow as he hurried to lead the embattled farmers who fought at Concord and Lexington. I realize it is impossible that revolution should be the outcome of our industrial troubles. The farmer of to-day does not consider that remedy for his wrongs. I quote history to show that the farmer, segregated and deliberate, does not move on slight provocation, but organizes only under deep conviction, and that when once organized and convinced, he is terribly in earnest, and is not going to rest until his wrongs are righted.

Now, here we are confronted with the most thorough and widespread agricultural movement of this or any other day. It is the duty alike of farmers and those who stand in other ranks, to get together and consult as to what is the real status and what is the patriotic duty. Not in sullenness, but in frankness. Not as opponents, but as friends—not as enemies, but as brothers begotten of a common mother, banded in common allegiance, and marching to a common destiny. It will not do to say that this organization will pass away, for if the discontent on which it is based survives it, it had better have lived and forced its wrongs to final issue. There is no room for divided hearts in this State, or in this Republic. If we shall restore Georgia to her former greatness and prosperity—if we shall solve the problems that beset the South in honor and safety—if we shall save this Republic from the dangers that threaten it—it will require the earnest and united effort of every patriotic citizen, be he farmer, or merchant, or lawyer, or manufacturer. Let us consider then the situation, and decide what is the duty that lies before us.

In discussing this matter briefly, I beg the ladies to give me their attention. I have always believed that there are few affairs of life in which woman should not have a part. Not obtrusive part—for that is unwomanly. The work falling best to the hand of woman is such work as is done by the dews of night—that ride not on the boasting wind, and shine not in the garish sun, but that come when the wind is stilled and the sun is gone, and night has wrapped the earth in its sacred hush, and fall from the distillery of the stars upon the parched and waiting flowers, as a benediction from God.

Let no one doubt the power of this work, though it lack pomp and circumstance. Is Bismarck the mightiest power of this earth, who is attended by martial strains when he walks abroad, and in whose path thrones are scattered as trophies? Why, the little housewife alone in her chimney-corner, musing in her happiness with no trophy in her path save her husband’s loving heart, and no music on her ear save the chirping of the cricket beneath her hearthstone, is his superior. For, while he holds the purse-strings of Germany, she holds the heart-strings of men. She who rocks the cradle rules the world. Give me then your attention, note the conflict that is gathering about us, and take your place with seeming modesty in the ranks of those who fight for right. It is not an abstract political theory that is involved in the contest of which I speak. It is the integrity and independence of your home that is at stake. The battle is not pitched in a distant State. Your home is the battle-field, and by your hearthstones you shall fight for your household gods. With your husband’s arms so wound around you that you can feel his anxious heart beating against your cheek—with your sons, sturdy and loving, holding your old hands in theirs—here on the threshold of your house, under the trees that sheltered your babyhood, with the graves of your dead in that plain enclosure yonder—here men and women, heart to heart, with not a man dismayed, not a woman idle—while the multiplied wolves of debt and mortgage, and trust and monopoly, swarm from every thicket; here we must fight the ultimate battle for the independence of our people and the happiness of our homes.

Now let us look at the facts: First, the notable movement of the population in America is from the country to the cities. In 1840—a generation ago, only one-twelfth of the American people lived in cities of more than 8000 people. In 1850, one-eighth; in 1860, one-sixth; in 1870, one-fifth; in 1880, one-fourth. In the past half-century the population of cities has increased more than four times as rapidly as that of the country. Mind you, when I say that the city population has increased in one generation from 8 per cent. to 25 per cent. in population, I mean the population of cities of more than 8000 people. There is not such a city in this congressional district. It is the village and town population, as well as that of the farms, that goes to swell so enormously the population of the great cities. Thus we see diminishing with amazing rapidity that rural population that is the strength and the safety of the people—slow to anger and thus a safeguard, but terrible in its wrath, and thus a tremendous corrective power. No greater calamity could befall any country than the sacrifice of its town and village and country life. I rejoice in Atlanta’s growth, and yet I wonder whether it is worth what it cost when I know that her population has been drawn largely from rural Georgia, and that back of her grandeur are thousands of deserted farms and dismantled homes. As much as I love her—and she is all to me that home can be to any man—if I had the disposal of 100,000 immigrants at her gates to-morrow, 5000 should enter there, 75,000 should be located in the shops and factories in Georgia towns and villages, and 20,000 sent to her farms. It saddens me to see a bright young fellow come to my office from village or country, and I shudder when I think for what a feverish and speculative and uncertain life he has bartered his rural birthright, and surrendered the deliberation and tranquillity of his life on the farm. It is just that deliberate life that this country needs, for the fever of the cities is already affecting its system. Character, like corn, is dug from the soil. A contented rural population is not only the measure of our strength, and an assurance of its peace when there should be peace, and a resource of courage when peace would be cowardice—but it is the nursery of the great leaders who have made this country what it is. Washington was born and lived in the country. Jefferson was a farmer. Henry Clay rode his horse to the mill in the slashes. Webster dreamed amid the solitude of Marshfield. Lincoln was a rail splitter. Our own Hill walked between the handles of the plow. Brown peddled barefoot the product of his patch. Stephens found immortality under the trees of his country home. Toombs and Cobb and Calhoun were country gentlemen, and afar from the cities’ maddening strife established that greatness that is the heritage of their people. The cities produce very few leaders. Almost every man in our history formed his character in the leisure and deliberation of village or country life, and drew his strength from the drugs of the earth even as a child draws his from his mother’s breast. In the diminution of this rural population, virtuous and competent, patriotic and honest, living beneath its own roof-tree, building its altars by its own hearthstone and shrining in its own heart its liberty and its conscience, there is abiding cause for regret. In the corresponding growth of our cities—already center spots of danger, with their idle classes, their sharp rich and poor, their corrupt politics, their consorted thieves, and their clubs and societies of anarchy and socialism—I see a pressing and impending danger. Let it be noted that the professions are crowded, that middlemen are multiplied beyond reason, that the factories can in six months supply the demand of twelve—that machinery is constantly taking the place of men—that labor in every department bids against itself until it is mercilessly in the hands of the employer, that the new-comers are largely recruits of the idle and dangerous classes, and we can appreciate something of the danger that comes with this increasing movement to strip the villages and the farms and send an increasing volume into the already overcrowded cities. This is but one phase of that tendency to centralization and congestion which is threatening the liberties of this people and the life of this Republic.

Now, let us go one step further. What is the most notable financial movement in America? It is the mortgaging of the farm lands of the country—the bringing of the farmer into bondage to the money-lender. In Illinois the farms are mortgaged for $200,000,000, in Iowa for $140,000,000, in Kansas for $160,000,000, and so on through the Northwest. In Georgia about $20,000,000 of foreign capital holds in mortgage perhaps one-fourth of Georgia’s farms, and the work is but started. Every town has its loan agent—a dozen companies are quartered in Atlanta, and the work goes briskly on. A mortgage is the bulldog of obligations—a very mud-turtle for holding on. It is the heaviest thing of its weight in the world. I had one once, and sometimes I used to feel, as it rested on my roof, deadening the rain that fell there, and absorbing the sunshine, that it would crush through the shingles and the rafters and overwhelm me with its dull and persistent weight, and when at last I paid it off, I went out to look at the shingles to see if it had not flopped back there of its own accord. Think of it, Iowa strips from her farmers $14,000,000 of interest every year, and sends it to New York and Boston to be reloaned on farms in other States, and to support and establish the dominion of the money-lenders over the people. Georgia gathers from her languishing fields $2,000,000 of interest every year, and sends it away forever. Could her farmers but keep it at home, one year’s interest would build factories to supply at cost every yard of bagging and every pound of guano the farmers need, establish her exchanges and their warehouses, and have left more than a million dollars for the improvement of their farms and their homes. And year after year this drain not only continues, but deepens. What will be the end? Ireland has found it. Her peasants in their mud cabins, sending every tithe of their earnings to deepen the purple luxury of London, where their landlords live, realize how poor is that country whose farms are owned in mortgage or fee simple by those who live beyond its borders. If every Irish landlord lived on his estate, bought of his tenants the product of their farms, and invested his rents in Irish industries, this Irish question that is the shame of the world would be settled without legislation or strife. Georgia can never go to Ireland’s degradation, but every Georgia farm put under mortgage to a foreign capitalist is a step in that direction, and every dollar sent out as interest leaves the State that much poorer. I do not blame the farmers. It is a miracle that out of their poverty they have done so well. I simply deplore the result, and ask you to note in the millions of acres that annually pass under mortgage to the money-lenders of the East, and in the thousands of independent country homes annually surrendered as hostages to their hands, another evidence of that centralization that is drinking up the life-blood of this broad Republic.

Let us go one step further. All protest as to our industrial condition is met with the statement that America is startling the world with its growth and progress. Is this growth symmetrical—is this progress shared by every class? Let the tax-books of Georgia answer. This year, for the first time since 1860, our taxable wealth is equal to that with which, excluding our slaves, we entered the civil war—$368,000,000. There is cause for rejoicing in this wonderful growth from the ashes and desolation of twenty years ago, but the tax-books show that while the towns and cities are $60,000,000 richer than they were in 1860, the farmers are $50,000,000 poorer.