interested in civil service reform, which was a product of a
differentiated society, in which professional expertness was recognized
and valued. He knew and cared little about administration, and being
used to a multitude of different tasks himself saw no reason why the
offices should not be passed around. In this view American farmers
generally concurred.

The Southern farmer was without interest in the pension system and was
prone to criticize it. The Fourteenth Amendment had forced the
repudiation of the whole Confederate debt, leaving the Southern veterans
compelled to pay taxes that were disbursed for the benefit of Union
veterans and debarred from enjoying similar rewards. They could not turn
Republican, yet in their own party they saw men who failed to represent
them.

In the North agriculture was depressed and the farmers were
discontented. In many regions the farms were worn out. Scientific
farming was beginning to be talked about to some extent, but was little
practiced. The improvements in transportation had brought the younger
and more fertile lands of the West into competition with the East for
the city markets. Cattle, raised on the plains and slaughtered at Kansas
City or Chicago, were offered for sale in New York and Philadelphia.
Western fruits of superior quality were competing with the common
varieties of the Eastern orchards. Here, as in the South, the farmers
saw the parties quarreling over issues that touched the manufacturing
classes, but disregarding those of agriculture.

It was in the West, however, that agricultural discontent was keenest.
In no other region were uniform conditions to be found over so large an
area. The Granger States had shown how uniformity in discontent may
bring forth political readjustments. The new region of the late eighties
lay west of Missouri and Iowa, where the railroads had stimulated
settlement along the farther edge of the arable prairies. Texas, Kansas,
Colorado, and the Dakotas had passed into a boom period about 1885, and
had pushed new farms into regions that could not in ordinary years
produce a crop. Only blinded enthusiasts believed that the climate of
the sub-humid plains was changing. In good years crops will grow as far
west as the Rockies: in bad, they dry up in eastern Kansas.

It served the interest of the railroads to promote new settlements, and
speculation got the better of prudence. The rainfall cooperated for a
few years, enabling the newco