tural conditions over which he had no control
to--engage in the production of staples, was fully as dependent on the
market and on transportation facilities as was his competitor in the
East.

In the fall of 1873 came the greatest panic in the history of the
nation, and a period of financial depression began which lasted
throughout the decade, restricting industry, commerce, and even
immigration. On the farmers the blow fell with special severity. At the
very time when they found it most difficult to realize profit on their
sales of produce, creditors who had hitherto carried their debts from
year to year became insistent for payment. When mortgages fell due, it
was well-nigh impossible to renew them; and many a farmer saw years
of labor go for nothing in a heart-breaking foreclosure sale. It was
difficult to get even short-term loans, running from seed-time to
harvest. This important function of lending money to pay for labor and
thus secure a larger crop, which has only recently been assumed by the
Government in its establishment of farm loan banks, had been performed
by private capitalists who asked usurious rates of interest. The
farmers' protests against these rates had been loud; and now, when
they found themselves unable to get loans at any rate whatever, their
complaints naturally increased. Looking around for one cause to which to
attribute all their misfortunes, they pitched upon the corporations
or monopolies, as they chose to call them, and especially upon the
railroads.

At first the farmers had looked upon the coming of the railroads as
an unmixed blessing. The railroad had meant the opening up of new
territory, the establishment of channels of transportation by which they
could send their crops to market. Without the railroad, the farmer who
did not live near a navigable stream must remain a backwoodsman; he must
make his own farm or his immediate community a self-sufficing unit; he
must get from his own land bread and meat and clothing for his family;
he must be stock-raiser, grain-grower, farrier, tinker, soap-maker,
tanner, chandler--Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. With the
railroad he gained access to markets and the opportunity to specialize
in one kind of farming; he could now sell his produce and buy in
exchange many of the articles he had previously made for himself at the
expense of much time and labor. Many farmers and farming communities
bought railroad bonds in the endeavor to increas