The Farmers' Influence over Prices

Abstract

The ability to exercise command over prices is the determining factor in the distribution of goods, whereby one class is enabled to rise to the higher levels of economic wellbeing; while the inability to command the price situation means eventual loss of such position, or failure ever to attain it. Probably no other class, or group, of people so great in numbers, with so high a level of intelligence, have during the past eventful century and a half remained so passive, and taken its share of the social dividend with such resignation, as have the farmers. Over a large part of this period it is almost as though the farmers' income were predetermined by the fates, and forecast by nothing more modern or reliable than the auguries. This extreme situation is more thoroughly characteristic of America than of some other countries, such for example as Germany, Denmark, and earlier, England. The American farmer is undoubtedly the most individualistic citizen to be found in numbers in any modern country. His life and his contacts have contributed to the development of a spirit of independence which has long been his pride, and now constitutes his weakness. For more than a century following the Revolution the farmer was coaxed westward by free land, not appreciating that free land