the big ice-marbles bouncing and heard the hail
drumming flat in a few minutes the acres of wheat you had worked so
hard to produce.

Or perhaps you escaped that time only to have your wheat frozen later
on and when you took three days on purpose to haul in a wagonload to
the elevator you couldn't get a decent offer for it. So that you
pulled off your mitts and clenched your frost-cracked hands as you
prepared to turn homeward with but a pitiful portion of the food and
clothing you had promised the family you would bring. As you spread
across your chest, inside your sheepskin coat, the old newspaper
somebody had given you would your soul expand with the joy of living
while you headed out into the snowy waste at forty degrees below zero?

And if after you got home and the crying young ones had been put to bed
in the corner behind the canvas curtain and your wife came and sat
beside you, her own tears bravely dried--if then you read in the paper
that the Government had decided you farmers were so prosperous you
should contribute from your easily gained wealth a free gift to
manufacturers, financiers, railway magnates or others--then would you
say with a great booming, hearty enthusiasm and shining eyes: "I tell
you, Wife, this is the life!"--would you?

Or would you just proceed to swear--naturally, successfully, in what is
known as "flowing" language?

By just such pioneer hardships were the farmers of Western Canada
driven to organize in self-defence. It has ever been the history of
revolt that its wellspring was the suffering of the people. Pioneer
hardships it was that caused the various movements which agitated the
farmers of the Western States in earlier days. When fingers become
hardened and crooked from unceasing toil that achieves nothing but
premature old age; when hope withers in a treadmill that grinds to the
very soul--then comes rebellion.

[1] Since the formation of the organized farmers' National Political
Platform several of its planks have been adopted as legislation at
Ottawa, notably the abolition of the patronage system, extension of the
franchise to women, total prohibition, and personal income taxation.

CHAPTER XXIV

AND THE END IS NOT YET.

The principle of co-operation draws the whole community together. It
breaks down barriers. It unites the State. It gives hope to the
humblest toiler. And it strengthens the great moral ideal of duty,
without which no State can endur