the cities,
and give the incidental benefits to the people who live in the cities.

"When indirect taxation is considered, the farmer's share is even more,
because when you come to collect taxes through indirection and on
consumption, you make people pay not in proportion to what they have but
in proportion to what they need, and God has so made us that the farmer
needs as much as anybody else, even though he may not have as much with
which to supply his needs as other people. In our indirect taxation,
therefore, for the support of the Federal Government, the farmers pay
even more out of proportion to their wealth and numbers. We should
remember also that when we collect taxes through consumption we make
the farmer pay not only on that which is imported, but upon much of that
which is produced at home. Thus the farmer's burden is not measured by
what the treasury receives, but is frequently many times what the
treasury receives. Thus under indirect taxation the burden upon the
farmer is greater than it ought to be; yet when you trace the
expenditure of public moneys distributed by the Federal Government you
find that even in a larger measure special benefits go to the great
cities and not to the rural communities.

"The improvement of the country roads can be justified also on the
ground that the farmer, the first and most important of the producers of
wealth, ought to be in position to hold his crop and market it at the
most favorable opportunity, whereas at present he is virtually under
compulsion to sell it as soon as it is matured, because the roads may
become impassable at any time during the fall, winter, or spring.
Instead of being his own warehouseman, the farmer is compelled to employ
middlemen, and share with them the profits upon his labor. I believe,
as a matter of justice to the farmer, he ought to have roads that will
enable him to keep his crop and take it to the market at the best time,
and not place him in a position where they can run down the price of
what he has to sell during the months he must sell, and then, when he
has disposed of it, run the price up and give the speculator what the
farmer ought to have. The farmer has a right to insist upon roads that
will enable him to go to town, to church, to the schoolhouse, and to the
homes of his neighbors, as occasion may require; and, with the extension
of rural mail delivery, he has additional need for good roads in order
that he may be kept in commu