A CORNER IN FARMERS IS FORMED AND IT BEHOLDS A MOST WONDERFUL VISION
It was already high time for fall planting operations on the Wallingford
estate, and Truscot County was a-quiver with what might be the result of
the new-fangled test-tube farming that Ham Tinkle was to inaugurate.
From the first moment of his hiring that young enthusiast plunged into
his work with a fervor that left him a scant six hours of sleep a night.
In the meantime J. Rufus took a flying trip to Chicago, where he visited
one broker's office after another. Those places with fine polished
woodwork and brass trimmings and expensive leather furniture he left
without even introducing himself--such stage settings were too much in
his own line of business for him not to be suspicious of them--but,
finally, he wandered into the office of Fox & Fleecer, a dingy, poorly
lighted place, where gas was kept burning on old-fashioned fixtures all
day long, where the woodwork was battered and blackened, where the
furniture was scratched and hacked and bound together with wires to keep
it intact, and where, on a cracked and splintered blackboard, one small
and lazy boy posted, for a score or so of rusty men past middle age, the
fluctuating figures of the Great Gamble. Mr. Fox, a slow-spoken and
absolutely placid gentleman of benevolent appearance and silvery
mutton-chop whiskers, delicately blended the impressions that while he
was indeed flattered by this visit from so distinguished a gentleman,
his habitual conservatism would not allow him to express his delight.
"How much money can you be trusted with?" asked Wallingford bluntly.
"I would not say, sir," rejoined Mr. Fox with no resentment whatever.
"We have been thirty years in these same offices, and we never yet have
had enough in our hands to make it worth while for us to quit business.
Permit me to show you our books."
His ledger displayed accounts running as high as two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars that had been intrusted to their care by single
individuals. But thirty years in business at the same old stand! He
insisted gently upon this point, and Wallingford nodded his head.
"Before I'm through I'll make all these bets look like cigar money," he
asserted, "but just now I'm going to put fifty thousand in your hands,
and I want it placed in exactly this way: Monday morning, with ten
thousand dollars buy me one hundred thousand bushels of December wheat
on a ten-cent margin. No more money will be put up on this deal, so
place a stop-loss order against it. If wheat drops enough to wipe out
the ten thousand dollars, all right; say nothing and report the finish
of the transaction to me. I'll do my own grinning. If wheat goes up
enough to leave me five cents a bushel profit, clear of commissions,
close the deal and remit. On the following Monday, if wheat has gone up
from the quotations of to-day, sell one hundred thousand bushels more at
ten cents margin and close at a sufficient drop to net me five cents
clear. If it has gone down, buy. Do this on five successive Mondays and
handle each deal separately. Get me one winning out of five. That's all
I want."
Mr. Fox considered thoughtfully for a moment, carefully polishing his
bald, pink scalp around and around with the palm of his hand. He gave
the curious impression of being always engaged with some blandly
interesting secret problem along with the business under consideration.
"Very well, sir," he observed. "Fox & Fleecer never makes any promises,
but if you will put your instructions into writing I will place them in
the hands of our Mr. Fleecer, who conducts our board operations. He will
do the best he can for you."
Mr. Wallingford looked about him for a stenographer. There was none
employed here, and, sitting down to the little writing table which was
pointed out to him, he made out the instructions in long hand, while Mr.
Fox polished away at his already glistening pate, still working at that
blandly interesting secret problem.
Ten days later, at the test-tube farm, arrived a report from Messrs. Fox
& Fleecer, inclosing their check for fifteen thousand dollars. Wheat, in
the week following Wallingford's purchase, had fortunately gone up
nearly six cents. This check, and the accompanying statement of the
transaction which had brought it forth, Wallingford showed to Ham
Tinkle, quite incidentally, of course, and Ham, in awe and enthusiasm,
confided the five-thousand-dollar winning to Hiram Hines, who spread the
report through Truscot County that Judge Wallingford had already made
fifteen thousand dollars in wheat since he had come among them. The
savings of an ordinary lifetime! The amount was fifty thousand when it
reached Mapes County. Two weeks later Messrs. Fox & Fleecer reported on
the second of Wallingford's deals. Wheat sold at ninety-four had dropped
to eighty-eight. Luck was distinctly with J. Rufus Wallingford.
"Why, oh, why, do cheap skates sell gold bricks and good come-on men
waste their talents on Broadway!" wailed Blackie Daw. "But what's the
joke, J. Rufus? I see your luck, but where do the surrounding farmers
get in? Or where do you get in on the surrounding farmers? Show me. I'm
an infant."
"You couldn't understand it, Blackie," said J. Rufus with condescending
kindness. "The mere fact that you look on these pocket-change winnings
as real money lets you out. Wait till I spring the big game. To-morrow
night you shall attend this winter's opening meeting of the Philomathean
Literary Society at the Willow Creek schoolhouse, and observe the
methods of a real bread winner."
For the memorable occasion that he had mentioned, Wallingford wore a
fur-lined overcoat and quadruple-woven blue silk sweater, and, being
welcomed with great acclaim, proposed for debate that burning question:
"Resolved: That the farmer is a failure as a business man."
With much stamping and pawing of the air that subject was thrashed out
by Abe Johnson and Dan Price for the affirmative, and Cal Whorley and Ed
Wiggin for the negative. The farmer as a gold-brick purchaser, as prey
for every class of tradesmen, as a producer who received less net profit
than any other from the capital and labor invested, was presented to
himself by men who knew their own grievances well, and the affirmative
was carried almost unanimously. Flushed with pleasure, beaming with
gratification, the most advanced farmer of them all arose in his place
and requested of the worthy chairman the privilege to address the
meeting, a privilege that was granted with pleasure and delight.
It was an eventful moment when J. Rufus Wallingford stalked up the
middle aisle, passed around the red-hot, cannon-ball stove and ascended
the rostrum which had been the scene of so many impassioned addresses;
and, as he turned to face them from that historic elevation, he seemed
to fill the entire end of the schoolroom, to blot out not only the
teacher's desk but the judges' seats, the blackboard and the
four-colored map of the United States that hung upon the wall behind
him. He was a fine-looking man, a solid-looking man, a gentleman of
wealth and culture, who, unspoiled by good fortune, was still a brother
to all men. Already he had gained that enviable reputation among them.
Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, it was startling to reflect
that the agriculturist was the only producer in all the world who had no
voice in the price which was put upon his product! The manufacturer
turned out his goods and set a price upon them and the consumer had to
pay that price. And how was this done? By the throttling of competition.
And how had competition been throttled? By consolidation of all the
interests in any particular line of trade. Iron and steel were all
controlled by one mighty corporation against which could stand no
competitor except by sufferance; petroleum and all its by-products were
in the hands of another, and each charged what it liked. The farmer
alone, after months of weary, unending toil, of exposure in all sorts of
weather, of struggle against the whims of nature and against an
appalling list of possible disasters, himself hauled his output to
market and meekly accepted whatever was offered him. Prices on every
product of the soil were dictated by a clique of gamblers who, in all
probability, had never seen wheat growing nor cattle grazing. Friends
and neighbors and fellow-farmers, this woeful condition must end! They
must cooeperate! Once compacted the farmers could stand together as firm
as a rock, could demand a fair and reasonable and just price for their
output, and get it. To-day wheat was quoted at ninety-four cents on the
Chicago Board of Trade. If the farmer, however, secured eighty-two at
his delivery point in actual cash he was doing well. There was no reason
why the farmers should not agree to establish a standing price of a
dollar and a half a bushel for wheat; and that must be their slogan.
Wheat at a dollar and a half!
He was vitally interested in this project, and he was willing to spend
his life and fortune for it; and, in the furtherance of it, he invited
his friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers to assemble at his house on
the following Saturday night and discuss ways and means to bring this
enormous movement to a practical working basis. Incidentally he _might_
find a bite and a sup and a whiff of smoke to offer them. All those who
would attend would please rise in their seats.
As one man they arose, and when J. Rufus Wallingford, glowing with the
immensity of his noble project, stepped down from that platform, the
walls of the Willow Creek schoolhouse echoed and reechoed with the
cheers which followed his speech.
The Farmers' Commercial Association! There had been farmers'
affiliations without number, with motives political, economical,
educational; alliances for the purchasing of supplies at wholesale and
for every other purpose under the sun, but nothing like this, for, to
begin with, the Farmers' Commercial Association had no initiation fee
and no dues, and it had for its sole and only object the securing of a
flat, uniform rate of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat. The first
meeting, attended by every able-bodied tiller of the soil in Truscot
County and some even from Mapes County, was so large that there was no
place in the Wallingford homestead to house it, and it had to be taken
out to the great new barn, where, in the spacious aisle between stalls
and mows, enthusiasm had plenty of room to soar to the rafters. One
feature had stilled all doubts: J. Rufus Wallingford alone was to pay!
With a whoop the association was organized, Judge Wallingford was made
its president, and with great enthusiasm was authorized to go ahead and
spend all of his own money that he cared to lay out for the benefit of
the association. Only one trifling duty was laid upon the members.
President Wallingford introduced an endless chain letter. It was brief.
It was concise. It told in the fewest possible words just why the
Farmers' Commercial Association had been formed and what it was expected
to do, laying especial stress upon the fact that there were to be no
initiation fees and no dues, no money to be paid for anything! All that
the members were to do was to join, and when enough were in, to demand
one dollar and a half for their wheat. It was a glittering proposition,
for there was no trouble and no expense and no risk, with much to gain.
Every one of the ninety-odd who gathered that night in Wallingford's
barn was to write three or more of these letters to wheat-growing
acquaintances, and each recipient of a letter was told that the only
thing which need be done to enroll himself as a member of the order was
to write three more such letters and send in his name to Horatio Raven,
Secretary.
Horatio Raven himself was there. There was a barrel of good, hard cider
on tap in the barn, and every few minutes Mr. Raven could be seen
conducting one or two acquaintances quietly over to the cellar, where
there were other things on tap. Cigars were passed around, and the good
cheer which was provided became so inextricably mingled with the
enthusiasm which had been aroused, that no farmer could tell which was
which. It only sufficed that when they went away each one was profoundly
convinced that J. Rufus Wallingford was the Moses who should lead the
farmers of America out of their financial Wilderness.
During the next two or three days nearly three hundred letters left
Truscot and Mapes counties, inviting nearly three hundred farmers in the
great wheat belt, extending from the Rockies to the Appalachians, to
take full sixty per cent. more for their produce than the average price
they had always been receiving, to invite others to receive like
benefits, and all to accept this boon without money and without price.
It was personal solicitation from one man to another who knew him, and
the first flood that went out reached every wheat-growing State in the
Union. Within a week, names and requests for further information began
pouring in upon Horatio Raven, Secretary, and the card index drawers in
the filing cabinet, originally bought in jest, became of actual service.
One, then two, then three girls were installed. A pamphlet was printed
explaining the purpose of the Farmers' Commercial Association, and these
were sent to all "members," J. Rufus Wallingford furnishing both the
printing and the postage.
Through the long winter the president of that great association was
constantly upon the road, always in his corduroy suit and his broad felt
hat, with his trousers tucked neatly into his seal-leather boots. His
range was from Pennsylvania to Nebraska and from Minnesota to Texas, and
everywhere his destination was some branch nucleus of the Farmers'
Commercial Association where meetings had been arranged for him. Each
night he addressed some body of skeptical farmers who came wondering,
who saw the impressive and instantly convincing "Judge" Wallingford;
who, listening, caught a touch of that magnetic thrill with which he
always imbued his auditors, and who went away enthusiastic to carry to
still further reaches the great work that he had planned. By the holiday
season he had visited a dozen States and had addressed nearly a hundred
sub-organizations. In each of these he gave the chain letters a new
start, and the December meeting of the central organization of the
Farmers' Commercial Association was also a Christmas celebration in the
barn of that progressive and self-sacrificing and noble farmer, J. Rufus
Wallingford.
It was a huge "family affair," held two nights before Christmas so as
not to interfere with the Baptist Church at Three Roads or the
Presbyterian Church at Miller's Crossing, and the great barn was trimmed
with wreaths and festoons of holly from floor to rafters. At one end was
a gigantic Christmas tree, from the branches of which glowed a myriad of
electric lights and sparkled innumerable baubles of vivid coloring and
metallic luster. Handsome presents had been provided for every man,
woman and child, and down the extent of the wide center had been spread
two enormous, long tables upon which was placed food enough to feed a
small army; huge turkeys and all that went with them. At the head of the
ladies' table sat Mrs. Wallingford, glittering in her diamonds, the
first time she had worn them since coming into this environment, and at
the head of the men's table, resplendent in a dinner coat and with huge
diamond studs flashing from his wide, white shirt bosom, sat the giver
of all these bounties, Judge J. Rufus Wallingford, president of the vast
Farmers' Commercial Association. He was flushed with triumph, and he
told them so at the proper moment. Beyond his most sanguine hopes the
Farmers' Commercial Association had spread and flourished in every
State, nay, in every community where wheat was grown, and the time was
rapidly approaching when the farmer, now turned business man, would be
able to get the full value of his investment of money, time and toil.
Moreover, they would destroy the birds of prey, feathers, bones and
beaks, fledgelings, eggs and nests.
Around the table, at this point, Horatio Raven, Secretary, passed a
sheaf of reports upon the various successful deals that Wallingford had
made, each one showing a profit of five thousand dollars on a
ten-thousand-dollar investment. The secret facts of the case were that
fortune had favored Wallingford tremendously. By one of those strange
runs of luck which sometimes break the monotony of persistent gambling
disasters, he had won not less than five out of every six of the
continuous deals intrusted to Fox & Fleecer. The failures he kept to
himself, and Ham Tinkle added to the furore that the proofs of this
success created by rising in his place and advising them how, upon
Wallingford's certain and sure advance information of the market, he
himself had been able to turn his modest little two hundred dollars into
seven hundred during the past three months, with the profits still
piling up.
But J. Rufus Wallingford, resuming, saw such profits vanishing in the
future, for by the aid of the Farmers' Commercial Association he
intended to wipe out the iniquitous grain and produce exchange, and, in
fact, all gambling in food products throughout the United States. The
scope of the Farmers' Commercial Association was much broader, much more
far-reaching than even he had imagined when he at first conceived it.
When they were ready they would not only establish a firm cash basis for
wheat, but they would wipe this festering mass of corruption, called the
Board of Trade, off the face of the earth by the simple process of
taking all its money away from it. With their certain knowledge of what
the price of wheat would be, when the time was ripe they would go into
the market and, themselves, by their aggregate profits, would break
every man who was in the business of manipulating prices on wheat, on
oats and corn and live stock. Why, nearly one million names were now
enrolled in the membership of the association, and to these million
names circulars explaining in detail the plans of the organization had
been mailed at a cost in postage alone of nearly ten thousand dollars.
This expense he had cheerfully borne himself, in his devotion to the
great work of reformation. Not one penny had been paid by any other
member of the organization for the furtherance of this project. He had
spent nearly twenty thousand dollars in travel and other expenses, but
the market had paid for it, and he was not one penny loser by his
endeavors. Even if he were, that would not stop him. He would sell every
government bond and every share of industrial and railroad stock that he
owned, he would even mortgage his farm, if necessary, to complete this
organization and make it the powerful and impregnable factor in
agricultural commerce that he had intended it to be. It was his dream,
his ambition, nay, his determined purpose, to leave behind him this vast
organization as an evidence that his life had not been spent in vain;
and if he could only see the wheat gamblers put out of that nefarious
business, and the farmers of the United States coming, after all these
toiling generations, into their just and honest dues, he would die with
peace in his heart and a smile upon his lips, even though he went to a
pauper's grave!
There were actual tears in his eyes as he closed with these words, and
his voice quivered. From the foot of the table Blackie Daw was watching
with a curious smile that was almost a sardonic grin. From the head of
the parallel table Mrs. Wallingford was watching him with a pallor that
deepened as he went on, but no one noticed these significant
indications, and as J. Rufus Wallingford sat down a mighty cheer went up
that made every branch of the glittering Christmas tree dance and
quiver.
He was a wonderful man, this Wallingford, a genius, a martyr, a being
made in his entirety of the milk of human kindness and brotherly love;
but this rapidly growing organization that he had formed was more
wonderful still. They could see as plain as print what it would do for
them; they could see even plainer than print how, with the certain
knowledge of the price to which wheat would eventually rise, they could
safely dabble in fictitious wheat themselves, and by their enormous
aggregate winnings, obliterate all boards of trade. It was a conception
Titanic in its immensity, perfect in its detail, amazing in its
flawlessness, and not one among them who listened but went home that
night--J. Rufus Wallingford's seal-leather pocketbook in his pocket, J.
Rufus Wallingford's box of lace handkerchiefs on his wife's lap, J. Rufus
Wallingford's daintily dressed French doll in his little girl's arm,
J. Rufus Wallingford's toy engine in his little boy's hands--but foresaw,
not as in a dream but as in a concrete reality that needed only to be
clutched, the future golden success of the Farmers' Commercial
Association; and on the forehead of that success was emblazoned in
letters of gold:
"$1.50 WHEAT!"