principal
products of the soil are necessaries of life, which the community cannot
do without whether the price be great or small, although an increase in
price is sure to result in a decreased consumption.

We may best determine this question by inquiring exactly how the prices
are forced up by monopolies. There can be but one way. The laws of
supply and demand hold good, and it is out of the power of the producer
to greatly affect the demand. It is only the supply of which he has
control. From the manufacturers' trust to the laborers' union, the only
way in which prices can be controlled is through a reduction in the
supply of goods made or men allowed to work; and if the price were to be
arbitrarily raised, the result would be the same; there would be a
surplus of goods, or some unemployed workmen. In order to raise the
price of his products, then, the farmer must do one of two things, which
will bring in the end the same result. He must send less of his products
to market--lessen the supply--or refuse to sell any thing at less than
the increased price which he desires. In either case, if he plants the
same acreage and gets the same yield as before, he will have a part of
his crop left on his hands.

The query then comes, can it be possible for the farmers all over the
country to form so perfect and well-disciplined an organization that
every member shall diminish his remittances to market of grain, wool,
meat, hay, or what not, enough to raise prices; or that he shall refrain
from selling all these articles below a certain defined price? It must
be plain to every intelligent person that it would be a practical
impossibility to effect such a thing. It would be possible to bring only
a small percentage of the farmers in an area 3,000 miles in length and
1,500 in width into a single organization; and it would be essential to
the success of this, as of every other scheme, that no outside
competition should be permitted to exist.

It may be argued that the Knights of Labor succeeded to a degree in
gathering into one organization a large proportion of the workingmen in
all the various trades in the country; but their members were mostly in
cities, many worked together in great factories, and as regards ease of
combination, they were far more easily handled than the widely scattered
farmers of the country could hope to be. Besides, the Knights of Labor
organization appears to be too unwieldy and cumbrous to be long
suc