Chapter III

DREADWIND walked back to the hotel, revolying in his mind a project and thinking at the same time on what he had seen. Thus was wheat handled. It had taken a farmer with assistance twenty minutes to sell a wagon load of wheat. That was 100 bushels. In the wheat pit the minimum quantity of wheat that can be bought and sold—the gambling unit—is 5000 bushels, and it changes hand by signal in the twinkling of an eye. How different! The difference between real and imaginary wheat. And how strange all this environment was to a wheat gambler!

The hotel was such a structural vanity as has been rising of recent years in the wheat and cattle towns, extra-modern and sure of it down to the brass nameplate for the clerk on duty; nothing newer, handier, smarter, more superfluous, in Kansas City itself—and nobody in the least awed by it. Visitors go about with their eyebrows raised. Native personages, to show how modern they are, lounge about in their shirt sleeves, without collars, put their feet on the velvet upholstery and drop ashes and matches on the imitation oriental carpets.

Dreadwind came back to it by a side street, having missed the main thoroughfare by one block, and entered through a door that obviously gave into the hotel and yet had no sign or legend upon it. Inside was a narrow hall; and halfway down this hall was an opening with two swinging wicker doors, the use of which was to screen the interior. There was nothing over these doors or on them to indicate what might be taking place inside; but by certain familiar sounds Dreadwind very easily guessed. He pushed the doors open and saw what he expected. It was a spacious room filled with chairs in rows. Across one wall was a large blackboard on which a boy chalked up grain quotations received from a telegraph operator at a sounder to one side. At the left were some partitioned spaces, one with a door marked “Office,” one with a window marked “Orders” and one with a window marked “Cashier.” Over the blackboard in large gilt letters was a sign: “Anthony Jumper—Broker—Member Chicago Grain Exchange—Grain and Stocks.”

It was a bucket shop—a gambling place. The windows were all screened. More than twenty customers were present in the chairs, some of them farmers, some evidently important citizens of the community, including the local banker, all a little furtive and trying very consciously to conceal it. Dreadwind was beguiled. A leopard unawares in a fox’s den! Approaching the order window he asked:

“How much wheat may one trade in here?”

“All you want,” said the young man behind the window. He was high and weary about it.

“How much margin?”

“Cent a bushel,” said the young man, affecting to yawn.

Dreadwind wrote on an order pad: “Sell 200M May wheat,” and pushed it through the window together with two one-thousand-dollar bills.

The silly young order clerk had more vanity than common sense. He had never seen an order as large as that. He ought not to have taken it on his own responsibility. But having made a high spit he could not chew dust. All that he did with the shock of surprise, more than to swallow it, was to adjust his nose glasses with an anaemic gesture of slight personal discomfort.

“All right, sir,” he said.

Dreadwind sat down. May wheat was 90 cents on the blackboard. In less than two minutes a boy brought him a memorandum reading: “Sold 200M May wheat at 89?.”

He was astonished. The celerity with which the report was returned proved what he already knew. This was a bucket shop. His order had not actually been executed. This is to say, the wheat had not been sold by telegraph in the wheat pit at Chicago. There was only the pretense of this having been done. All that had happened was that a bet had been entered on the books of the concern—a bet between Anthony Jumper and an unknown client on the price of 200,000 bushels of wheat. But a bet of that size was rather large to be accepted with all coolness in a small-town bucket shop. And Dreadwind was curious to see what would come of it. The price of wheat began to fall. The next quotation made it 89³/₄, then 89?, then 89¹/₂.

Presently the wicker doors flew open and shut again. Mr. Jumper was back from lunch. He was a bald, brisk little man with an ingratiating manner plated upon a metallic surface. First he stopped in the office. A minute later he was with the young man behind the order window to see what business had been doing in his absence. Suddenly he burst forth in a great hurry, crossed the room toward the blackboard, spoke a word to the telegraph operator, and went directly back behind the order window. There he conversed in low tones with the young man, all the time regarding Dreadwind with a shrewd slanting look.

Anyone who knows a bucket shop will understand this pantomime. Jumper saw Dreadwind’s transaction in 200,000 bushels of wheat as the young man had entered it on the betting sheet. Then he saw on the blackboard that the price of wheat was falling. The unknown customer was winning. His first act was to tell the telegrapher to stop passing up prices—to sit on them until further notice. That would give him time to think. Having thus postponed disaster he went back behind the window to have a good look at Dreadwind and resolve a course of action. All of this Dreadwind was amusedly aware of; and he was not surprised when Jumper came and sat down beside him.

Jumper had decided to take his dilemma by the horns. His instinct was sound. He knew the kind of person Dreadwind was.

“This is no place for you,” he said quietly, in a confidential voice. “We can’t handle your business.”

“But you have it,” said Dreadwind, showing the memorandum on which it was written: “Sold 200M May wheat at 89?.” That was binding. With an uncontrollable impulse Jumper reached for the paper. Dreadwind gently drew it back.

“You’re a good sport,” said Jumper. “I can size a man up. And you’re an old hand at this game. I can see that with one eye. You don’t want to upset me, do you? This is just a little affair here. I’m only starting for myself. Took over a business I was working for.”

“What’s the matter with your wire service?” Dreadwind asked. “Your quotations have stopped.”

“Honest, now,” said Jumper, ignoring the question, “I can’t handle your business. The bank roll won’t stand it. You know how that is. That boy was all alone there when you came in. He didn’t know any better. He’s a nice boy. Got an old mother to look after. Now man to man—we understand each other—just man to man, let’s call it off.”

“I can read the telegraph instrument,” said Dreadwind. “I know what the price of wheat is. It’s 88¹/₂. I hear it. And the last price on the board is 89¹/₂.”

Jumper gave vent to a startled sinner’s oath. “You ain’t one of them ringers that goes around busting up little fellows like me? You ain’t, are you? No. You ain’t. I can see that.”

“If you don’t let those quotations go up on the board I’ll tell everybody what kind of game you are running,” said Dreadwind.

Jumper looked around the room with a desperate air, scanning the wide, wide ocean for a bit of friendly wreckage. Then he relaxed, puffing out his breath.

“I’m up the flue if you do,” he said. “Up, up. Gone! Busted! All right. Go ahead and see what you get. No, now listen. See here. You are a good sport all the same. I’m not wrong about a man like you. Let me slip you this two thousand and you tear up that piece of paper. Would you take advantage of me when there was only that idiot alone in the shop? And he with an old mother to think about?”

“Well, on one condition,” said Dreadwind. “I want you to tell me something.”

“I’ll tell you anything,” said Jumper. “Only first let’s get this off my mind.”

“Not yet,” said Dreadwind. “First, tell me, who is that——”

“Please,” pleaded Jumper, “let me slip you this money and tear up that piece of paper.”

“I’m asking,” said Dreadwind, “who is that totem pole with the owl face in the last chair behind us?”

The person he indicated was the old man who had bullied the grain buyer at the elevator. He entered the room right after Dreadwind and had been regarding him ever since in an overt manner. With Jumper, Dreadwind was not really serious. All the time he meant to take the back money and cancel the bet. But he could not resist the impulse to stretch it a bit; and casting about for some pretext on which to prolong the bucket-shop keeper’s agony he thought of the old man, who had evidently followed him from the elevator.

Jumper screwed round in his chair.

“Him? He’s nobody,” he said. “He comes with the chinch bugs about this time of year. Never was in here before. But I’m only starting for myself, as I told you. I used to see him in the place I was work-ing.”

“What’s his name?”

“Weaver.”

“His first name?”

“Absalom. What about him? He’s queer, that’s all.”

“What’s queer about him?”

“Nothing you can say. Just the way he comes and goes. All the farmers know him.”

“Does he ever trade?”

“Not that I know of. I never saw him trade.”

“But you’ve heard of his trading?”

“I’ve heard it said he had something once and lost it trading.”

“Where does he live?”

“Not around here. I’m telling you, he comes and goes. That’s all I know. Please let me slip you this money. It’s burning a hole in me.”

Dreadwind handed him the slip of paper on which their bet was recorded and Jumper surreptitiously returned him his two one-thousand-dollar bills.

“Wait a minute,” said Jumper. He went again to the blackboard, not hurriedly this time, and spoke in a casual manner to the telegrapher. The telegrapher made no vocal response; but all at once the quotations began to go up on the board. Jumper returned to Dreadwind and sat down.

“Now, I don’t want you to think I run this place crooked,” he said. “I don’t. It’s straight. There’s no use trying to fool you. We talk the same language. What I’m saying is honest. I never stopped the quotations that way before. I wouldn’t. But you had me where I couldn’t help myself. You know yourself how that is.”

Dreadwind nodded his head. Jumper went on.

“Of course you do. I’d ‘a’ gone up the flue in a minute. No, sir, when I started here I made up my mind to play it on the level. Why not? They lose their money anyhow. I couldn’t do anything to quotations that would make them lose it any faster. I’m satisfied. Maybe you’re in this line yourself?”

“Not exactly,” said Dreadwind.

“I don’t quite get you yet,” said Jumper. “But I know the kind of man you are, and you know all about this game, don’t you?”

“Something,” said Dreadwind modestly.

“Well, as I see it, it’s all right,” said Jumper. “As I say, they will lose their money anyhow. They would lose it just the same if we sent their orders to Chicago to be executed regular, like they think we do. The only difference would be then that them big Chicago gamblers, them Dreadwinds and others, would get it. They don’t need it and we do. When we get it we spend it here in the town. I’ve just built a house here. That’s what I mean. Suppose I sent their orders to the Chicago Board of Trade instead of sticking them on a spike back of that partition. That money I built a house with would have gone to Chicago, wouldn’t it? As it is it stays here in the community. That’s better. And what difference does it make to them? Not a bit of difference. They would lose it anyhow. I’ve thought this all out because I’m honest.”

“Do farmers trade with you much?” asked Dreadwind.

“They’re my best customers.”

“And they always lose?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. Not the farmers only. I’ve never seen a man beat the game yet, not in the long run. All you have to do is keep on with him and you get his money. Maybe you can beat it. I don’t know. I think maybe you can. That’s why I was so scared. But the farmers—you were speaking of them—it’s funny. They never do but one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Buy, buy, buy. They don’t know anything else. Sometimes I feel like saying to them: ‘You make it, don’t you? You grow it, don’t you? You take all the risk to begin with. Then you come in here and buy it as a gamble.’ I don’t understand them. If I was a farmer I’d never do anything but sell, if I gambled at all, and I wouldn’t. But that would be logical, wouldn’t it? I feel like telling them sometimes. But I don’t. What’s the use? They’d lose it anyhow.”

He sighed for the foibles of mankind. Dreadwind rose. They shook hands.

“Thanks,” said Jumper for the last time. “I was never wrong about a man yet.”

The old man was gone. Dreadwind had not seen him go, and he was disappointed, for he meant to have contact with him. He strolled about the streets on the chance of finding him again; but he had vanished, and casual inquiries were of no avail. “It’s a whim only,” said Dreadwind, “not worth remembering.” Still, he did remember it and kept thinking about it as he proceeded to act on the project that had formed in his mind on leaving the grain elevator.

In the middle of the afternoon you might have seen him on the highway, made out in the rig he had furnished himself with in the town—stout shoes, leggings, khaki trousers, a flannel shirt and soft hat. He carried a stick cut from a wayside hedge and had on his back an army knapsack stenciled U. S. A. People nodded pleasantly as he passed and he nodded back at them and did not know they turned to stare.

This he placed as one of the high moments of his life. I envied him. Fancy seeing the country in that way for the first time—receiving one’s impressions of of it originally on a fresh negative, through a lens of full power, with nothing expected, nothing familiar, nothing to be taken for granted.

A breeze was stirring. The wheat was in gentle motion. It seemed always to be running toward him, eagerly, excitedly, expectantly, like a friendly dog on crouched steps with its eyes glad and its ears flat. He wished to pet it, stroke it; he heard himself talking to it. After some groping he found a word for the feeling he experienced at that moment. He was flooded, he said, with a sense of profound wisdom. Profound is mine. He said simply wisdom, but with an accent I cannot reproduce. Twice he turned back to the first great field of wheat. The original thrill was there. Almost he could not bear to part with it. Mind you, I’m filling in. A man could not talk that way about his own emotions. Dreadwind at least could not. What he said was: “Twice I went back to the first field of wheat I saw.” There he paused in the narrative, sat for a moment in reverie, and then with a little start went on.

At each turn or rise in the road he stopped. Once there was a sudden view of an old house between two great trees at the far edge of a field of wheat; beyond the house was a brook, back of that a rise of ground and then some kind of sky. Nothing unusual perhaps. It appears to have been such a glimpse as sometimes frames itself in reality, a bit of perfect natural composition that gives one a mysterious sense of self-projection. I am saying this. What it reminded him of was a woodcut of spring in the almanac his mother kept on a nail in her kitchen cupboard. That woodcut had remained vividly in his mind all these years. Always when he thought of the country he thought of that. It had been another world. And here it was, that other world, in being. He was walking in it.

When the sun was low he asked for supper at a farm-house, choosing a small one. The farmer, in his stocking feet, was rocking on the side porch. Having adjusted his mind to Dreadwind’s request he looked out over the fields instead of turning toward the open door, and called in a loud voice: “Maw! Here’s a man wants to eat supper with us.” A long silence; the farmer motionless, gazing into his fields. Then a pinched voice from the kitchen: “There ain’t much to eat. If he will be satisfied with what I can pick up. I don’t know.” Dreadwind’s satisfaction was pledged. “Well, it ain’t ready yet,” said the pinched voice. “Give him a chair.” And whereas until then indoors had been tomblike, now began suddenly a series of promissory sounds—the rattle of stove lids, a clangor of pans, a clicking of dishes, and very soon the sizzle of meat falling into hot fat.

“Wheat looks very good,” said Dreadwind at a hazard.

“Been looking at it myself,” said the farmer. “You can’t tell from the road. Sometimes you can’t tell until it’s threshed. Wheat you think’s fine threshes light. Wheat you think’s spindly and light does better, though that ain’t so often as like the other way.”

“The country looks prosperous,” said Dreadwind, after a dead pause.

“Does it?” said the farmer. “Maybe so.”

“Isn’t it?”

“That’s according to how you look at it,” said the farmer, aggressively crossing his knees the other way.

The seam was open. He began to complain. He complained of the weather, of pests, of a certain man’s luck who thought it was good management, of the price of farm implements, of the Government for never doing anything, of the trusts that controlled its do-nothingness, and of speculators who got all the profit in everything. Dreadwind noticed that the barn needed mending. The windmill, the water trough, the hog fence, the hen shed, the porch floor sagging under the rocking chair—they all wanted mending. The only mending he could see anywhere had been done to the farmer’s wool socks. A rusty reaper stood under the apple tree.

“Maybe he wants to wash,” the woman called from inside. She appeared in the door holding out a hand basin. “Supper’s most ready,” she added.

When they sat down to it the farmer asked the Lord’s blessing on the food and immediately lost himself in the partaking of it.

Now the woman began. There was no fresh meat. Only ham. Nobody was expected to come in like this at suppertime. The ham was not as good as it ought to be because just as it was ready to come out of the smokehouse her mother’s cousin who lived in the next county was seized in the night and they went over to her in haste and were gone three days and the boy didn’t know enough to take the meat out. Anyway, they hadn’t told him to. But it got smoked too much. If the stranger had come an hour earlier there might have been chicken. If it was Saturday there would be fresh bread. If it was Tuesday there would be fresh butter. And buttermilk. Or maybe he didn’t like buttermilk? Some didn’t who never knew what it was to get it fresh. The preserves were not sweet enough. Sugar had been so high. The potatoes were old because the new ones were late. She might ask him if he would have some eggs except that there wouldn’t be any eggs until tomorrow. The last one had gone to fill out a crate the expressman called for, a day ahead of his regular time, on account of the fact he was going to be married.

No matter. The food was delicious. Ham, cream gravy, fried potatoes, asparagus, buttered beets, pot cheese, chopped pickles, pears in sirup and coconut cake—delicious and plenty, all but the coffee, which was plenty only. When the meal was over Dreadwind wished to pay a dollar. The woman wanted twenty-five cents. The farmer was not interested. He seemed embarrassed at this commercial translation of an act of hospitality, and retired to the rocking-chair on the porch. A quarter it had to be. Dreadwind paid it and took his leave, conscious at the end of some slight constraint on both sides. The woman shook hands with him as he extended his, but immediately turned her back and began to rattle the dishes. The farmer’s good-bye from the rocking-chair was a little bit curt. Dreadwind did not understand it.

In the narrative he lingered over this incident. Whether it was that it touched him in some subtle way he could not explain or that he needed time for what was to come next, I leave you to guess. It was a new world, full of strange people, with shy impulses both toward and away from one. His first experiences with them would be likely to leave a vivid impress. Yet I rather think he dwelt on this episode to gain time. The beginning of the great romance was only a few miles farther on. He was coming to it.

Darkness came, seeming to rise out of the ground, and he was still walking, musing, thinking out loud, wondering a little where he should lodge for the night, or whether to sleep in the open air by the roadside, when he caught a twinkling of lights in the foliage some distance ahead; and there was no sign of a village. As he came nearer he heard a man’s voice, rhetorically pitched; and then a scene unfolded. A lawn in front of a farmhouse was dimly lighted by lanterns swung in the trees. Twenty men or more were seated there on chairs and benches, a few on the porch stoop in the background. On a box, under three lanterns on a horizontal stick nailed to a tree, stood the speaker. There were some pamphlets at his feet, some under his left arm, one open in his right hand. His theme was coöperation. He was reading from the literature of the American Farm Bureau Federation, this:

“Coöperative marketing is the golden rule of agriculture. The fever and fear are removed from the season of the harvest. The farmer who is favored by season or seedtime with an early harvet pools his crop with that of his neighbor. For like quality and grade of product they receive the same price. Their crop moves to market from their common bin in orderly fashion. There is no surplus bugaboo chasing relentlessly on their heels and breathing the scorching fire of ruinous prices. Neighbor joins with neighbor. They pool their product. They share and share alike in the new system of economic justice for agriculture. All this is precisely what the Great Teacher meant when he said: ‘Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them.’ “

The speaker cast that pamphlet down and opened another. He would deal now with facts. Already coöperative associations were marketing more than a billion dollars’ worth of farm produce annually. Take prunes, the perfect example of successful coöperation in marketing. Everybody knew what the prune growers had done. Here, of course, the problem was wheat, and there were those who said that what the prune growers had done wheat growers couldn’t because wheat was different—that prunes were prunes and wheat was wheat. He would show them how wrong they were. He would show them there was no difference. He was there to tell them that prunes were wheat and wheat was prunes. He would prove it.

The proof was intricate. Dreadwind’s attention wandered from the speaker to the audience. His position was such that he could see the faces and remain himself unseen, leaning on the fence, outside the lighted circle. And there at the far edge of the group, a little apart, sat his old man—namely, Absalom Weaver. He was not alone. Beside him sat a young woman with her two hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on the speaker, her mind apparently in rapt contemplation of the abstract idea that wheat was prunes.

How simple it sounds!

There sat a young woman. But what if she were the only young woman in the world? And when this manner of thing happens she is. The unsearchable moment, I suppose, is that in which the man for the first time sees all women in one, the eternal symbol embodied and undivided, and conceives a fixation for it. No other event in life is comparable to this. Everything that ever occurred in the universe must have occurred precisely as it did through infinite chance to bring it to pass. And there is the choice of only one or two commonplace phrases to describe it. He fell in love with her. Yes? What does that mean?

At this point of the story he groped, wandered into irrelevancies, fell into sudden silences. It seemed like trying to recall a very old dream. He was for going on. I brought him back. What did he do? I wanted to know what he did. He remembered standing behind her, close enough to have touched her; how he got there he could not recall. One will suppose that he opened the gate with his two hands, went in on his two feet, walked around the group and stood near her. No one would have been likely to notice him.

It was curious that he should have remembered something that had nothing to do with it. That was the speaker’s climax. It was this:

“The farmer sells and the farmer buys. What does he sell? A primal substance, the food that sustains the world. What does he buy? Machinery, wagons, building materials, hardware, cloth, sugar, sometimes a piano or a phonograph—such things. When he sells the primal substance what does he say to the buyer? He says: ‘How much will you give me?’ But when he buys what does he say? He says: ‘How much will you take?’ Think it over. In every case it is like that: ‘How much will you give me?’ for what he sells: ‘How much will you take?’ for what he buys.”

At this an assenting, brooding murmur went through the crowd. Until then it had listened in a stolid manner. Now the speaker, who was an organizer for a state-wide coöperative marketing association, began to solicit signatures, passing the printed blanks around.

A voice was lifted up, calling, “Weaver!”

The old man did not stir. He sat with his hands clasped around an upraised knee. Other voices took up his name, calling: “Ab!... Weaver!... Absalom Weaver! What about it?”

Respect and familiarity were mingled in these voices; and as they kept insisting the old man slowly arose.

“Sign,” he said. “Go on and sign. It will be educating. Each generation must learn for itself and when it has learned it is ready to die.”

With that he sat down. It was not enough. They continued to call upon him. He arose again and said:

“Luke, eighteenth chapter, twenty-second verse: ‘Sell all that thou hast and follow me.’ That is the sublime thought for coöperative marketing. I commend it to you. It works. But it works in heaven. Don’t let anybody tell you it will pay on earth.”

And a second time he sat down. Their demand became explicit. They said: “Preach us a sermon.” And when it was irresistible he got up and walked to the place under the three lanterns. He did not stand on the box.

Dreadwind remembered distinctly that now he sat down beside the young woman and spoke to her.

“Is that your father?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said; and looked at him with surprise. It was clear that she was surprised, not at having been spoken to by a stranger, for as to that she was quite indifferent, but that anyone should have asked that question.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Cordelia,” she answered without looking at him again. Her gaze followed her father. He had not yet begun to speak, but was peering about in the grass, stooping here and there to pluck a bit of vegetation. He walked as far as the fence for a bramble leaf. Returning he snapped a twig from the elm above his head and faced them.

“This natural elm,” he began, with an admiring look at the tree, “was once a tiny thing. A sheep might have eaten it at one bite. Every living thing around it was hostile and injurious. And it survived. It grew. It took its profit. It became tall and powerful beyond the reach of enemies. What preserved it—coöperative marketing? What gave it power—a law from Congress? What gave it fullness—the Golden Rule? On what was its strength founded—a fraternal spirit? You know better. Your instincts tell you no. It saved itself. It found its own greatness. How? By fighting. Did you know that plants fight? If only you could see the deadly, ceaseless warfare among plants this lovely landscape would terrify you. It would make you think man’s struggles tame. I will show you some glimpses of it.

“I hold up this leaf from the elm. The reason it is flat and thin is that the peaceable work of its life is to gather nourishment for the tree from the air. Therefore it must have as much surface as possible to touch the air with. But it has another work to do. A grisly work. A natural work all the same. It must fight. For that use it is pointed at the end as you see and has teeth around the edge—these. The first thing the elm plant does is to grow straight up out of the ground with a spear thrust, its leaves rolled tightly together. Its enemies do not notice it. Then suddenly each leaf spreads itself out and with its teeth attacks other plants; it overturns them, holds them out of the sunlight, drowns them. And this is the tree! Do you wonder why the elm plant does not overrun the earth? Because other plants fight back, each in its own way. I show you a blade of grass. It has no teeth. How can it fight? Perhaps it lives by love and sweetness. It does not. It grows very fast by stealth, taking up so little room that nothing else minds, until all at once it is tall and strong enough to throw out blades in every direction and fall upon other plants. It smothers them to death. Then the bramble. I care not for the bramble. Not because it fights. For another reason. Here is its weapon. Besides the spear point and the teeth the bramble leaf you see is in five parts, like one’s hand. It is a hand in fact, and one very hard to cast off. When it cannot overthrow and kill an enemy as the elm does, it climbs up his back to light and air, and in fact prefers that opportunity, gaining its profit not in natural combat but in shrewd advantage, like the middleman. Another plant I would like to show you. There is one near by. Unfortunately it would be inconvenient to exhibit him in these circumstances. His familiar name is honeysuckle. He is sleek, suave, brilliantly arrayed, and you would not suspect his nature, which is that of the preying speculator. Once you are in his toils it is hopeless. If you have not drowned or smothered him at first he will get you. The way of this plant is to twist itself round and round another and strangle it.

“This awful strife is universal in plant life. There are no exemptions. Among animals it is not so fierce. They can run from one another. Plants must fight it out where they stand. They must live or die on the spot. Among plants of one kind there is rivalry. The weak fall out and die; the better survive. That is the principle of natural selection. But all plants of one kind fight alike against plants of all other kinds. That is the law of their strength. None is helped but who first helps himself. A race of plants that had wasted its time waiting for Congress to give it light and air, or for a state bureau with hired agents to organize it by “the Golden Rule, or had been persuaded that its interests were in common with those of the consumer, would have disappeared from the earth.

“The farmer is like a plant. He cannot run. He is rooted. He shall live or die on the spot. But there is no plant like a farmer. There are nobles, ruffians, drudges, drones, harlots, speculators, bankers, thieves and scalawags, all these among plants, but no idiots, saying, ‘How much will you give?’ and ‘What will you take?’ Until you fight as the elm fights, take as the elm takes, think as the elm thinks, you will never be powerful and cannot be wise.”