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to desperation, and have resolved to take the political management of the State into their own hands. Out of the necessity to adjust these questions grew up the Alliance movement in Kansas.

They began to inquire how it is that in this new State, with its boundless resources, improved machinery, skilled labor, and its improved means of transportation, the farmers are getting deeper in debt each year; that this new State, that twenty-five years ago was without debt, is now so hopelessly encumbered that it would not sell for enough to pay its debts. This certainly is not caused by the failure of crops, for the crop of Kansas will average with that of any other State in the Union; and Kansas has each year a surplus of wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle.

Some of our public men have said that it was over-production, that we have been raising too much wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle for the world's use. Others have said that it is because the farmers are too extravagant. Others that they are idle and spend their time in talking politics. Others that the farmers do not employ the best methods of farming, and do not understand how to make the soil produce the most with the smallest amount of land and labor. All of which is contradictory and unsatisfactory, and we must look further for the true cause. They made the discovery after they had lighted the lights in schoolhouses and began to study and discuss these economic questions. They learned that what a farmer wants when he raises a crop of corn and wheat and other products of the farm, is to trade his surplus of such products for the things which he needs; that he must produce on his farm what he must exchange for the products of the manufacturer, and turn them into money value, which represents the value of all articles. He found that, under the present system of trade, he was prevented from making this exchange with the men who would give him the best bargain; that he would be fined, in fact, from forty-seven to fifty-two per cent for his trade, and compelled to trade in the market where there is no competition, where competition has been destroyed by laws passed in the interest of the manufacturer; and through these laws he is forced to bargain with the men who will give him the least of the things he wants for the greatest amount of the things which he does not want, and so he grows poorer and poorer from year to year and consumes less. As this goes on, the manufacturer making the articles the farmer should consume soon learns that his custom is falling off, and that he must reduce the number of his employees and the wages of those retained. The laborers thus thrown out of employment must also reduce their expenses, and are forced to use less of the products of the farm and

factory. In this way is brought about what the political wiseacres call an over-production, which is in fact under-consumption. There is an over-production of too many farmers, laborers, manufacturers, professional men, merchants, railroads; in fact, too many of everybody. There are particularly too many fools who vote to keep up such a system of government, which obstructs trade and progress, and brings poverty and distress upon the whole land.

Then, again, when the farmer sends his surplus to market the railroads lie in wait for him. In effecting his exchange he must use this great public highway, and he finds that what should be a public blessing is turned into an engine of oppression, and that all the benefits growing out of this great invention are given to the large corporations, which are enabled to rob the people through special privileges granted by laws passed by a Congress whose election has been secured by the free use of money wrung from the people by the charge upon watered stock.

Another cause of poverty among the farmers is our system of indirect taxation. Under this system a man is taxed on what he spends, and as the average income of the Western farmer is not more than $500 per annum, he spends at least $350 of this to support his family. One-third of this is taken from him by indirect taxation, or in bounties to capitalists or rich corporations. The balance of his income is used up in paying State and municipal taxes. To cover this loss that falls upon him from year to year, he is forced to take out a mortgage on his farm. Then it is that he falls a prey to the grandest robber of them all, the loan agent or shark, who demands upon a mortgage of $500, in some instances, as high as twenty per cent for securing the loan, and from ten to fifteen per cent for insuring the small buildings on the farm, and then raises doubts about the claimant's right to prove up on it at the land-office, and extracts ten or fifteen per cent for securing the poor settler's title to the land upon which he has lived and worked hard for over five years, in accordance with the homestead law.

The farmer, of course, demurs at this exaction; but the time has come when he must buy improved machinery, and pay debts previously contracted, and the government fees at the land-office before he can prove up. He and his wife, fearing that they must give up the fruits of their labor and struggles to build up a new home, sign the papers, and, after the Shylock's exactions, receive from two to three hundred dollars out of the $500 twelve per cent mortgage, and divide the balance of the swag between the loan agent and the banker, who sells the mortgage, knowing how it has been obtained, to his neighbors, friends, or kinsmen in the East, for the full face of the mortgage, and swaggers around town

as a great financier. The mortgage usually contains the provisions that the buildings shall be kept insured, and the taxes paid on the farm, or foreclosure and eviction can be summarily enforced on the settler, leaving him and his family, with his homestead rights to take up public land gone, in a strange land without home or friends.

How could it be possible under such a system that the rich should fail to grow richer and the men of moderate means should rapidly fall into the ranks of the extremely poor? Then is it any wonder that the men who followed "old John Brown" into Kansas, on the principle that it was wrong to rob the black man of the fruits of his toil, should rebel when their own welfare is at stake? It can easily be seen that, after waiting year after year for the Republican party to come to their relief, and each succeeding year seeing relief further off, and that the State had fallen into the hands of the worst political crew that ever cursed any country, under the domineering rule of this arrogant party, controlled by this aristocratic ring of political office-seekers, who cared only for their own advancement, forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and the farmers were wise in resolving to take charge of things themselves. They made the discovery that for long years they had been blinded to their own interests by designing politicians, who kept alive the old war issues and prejudices. They resolved to cast aside the chief apostle of this doctrine of hate, John J. Ingalls, and thereby set an example to the rest of the country, particularly to the South. They saw that new issues would be brought to the front that were pressing for adjustment; therefore it was time to bury the old ones. With this new declaration of independence, called the "St. Louis Demands," they commenced a political revolution that bids fair to sweep from one end of the country to the other, and drive from place and power the men who fattened upon the labor of the people. That this will be no easy task all history will testify; for the oppressor never lets go without a struggle, whether he wields his power through military force, the Church, by controlling money, trade, commerce, transportation, through cunningly devised schemes of legislation, or by holding men in chattel slavery. All history proves that this is the selfish, brutal part of the human race, which knows no law but force.

Now this rebellion in Kansas is against this principle. The people have been driven to it by oppression from the moneyed class of this country. They have served notice upon the politicians of the country that, from this time on, the farmers of this country are going to take a hand in its politics.

CHAPTER XI.

THE NEEDS OF THE SOUTH.

BY HON. L. F. LIVINGSTON, MEMBER OF Congress from GEORGIA, AND PRESIDENT OF THE GEORGIA STATE ALLIANCE.

THE needs of the South are peculiar, rendered so by a combination of circumstances that the outside world is slow to understand. No other civilized and Christianized people have been so misunderstood and misjudged. Since the war between the States, the magazine correspondents, newspaper scribblers, and politicians, combined with those who knew the former power and greatness of the South socially, politically, and financially, and actuated purely by prejudice and jealousy, were determined that her reconstruction should never lead to her former prestige. These have all placed the South and her environments before an inquiring world in a false light. Nothing has been given so freely, "without money and without price," to the struggling South as advice. This, as usual, comes from people either ignorant of our needs or wilfully opposed to the betterment of our condition, and has proven as worthless as gratuitous.

It would prove an interesting chapter in the history of the South if this intermeddling in detail, and the real condition of the people, could be spread out before the civilized world. To do so in this article would neither be appropriate nor consistent with the object for which it is written.

We often come to correct conclusions more readily by looking at the negative side of a proposition. There are many things the South does not and never will need, and there are other things that she may, in her future development, require that are inopportune now. There are two great questions that effect her interest: What are her present and possible needs? and how are they to be obtained? To present this more clearly, we reassert, first, the things she does not need should be shown. The South does not need a moneyless immigration. This has been a wild and visionary demand, both from home and abroad. The day may come when such immigration would be profitable. At this time it is a struggle on our part to decently support and educate the present population. Immigration, to be profitable to a country or section, must find an open road to labor, and cheap and ready means of supplying their

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