text: Sfc WWKMITi " ?- - ? : : lewis >1. gbist, i?roprietor."| |ut $wlf|)eml(nf <Jiunilg Htctcspiifr: J,or fhc fwttrtioiT of the" ?lli(aC]^^f(nnttwtijtlJntcrtBta of fltt J^oufh. " |TERMS?$2.00 A YEAR IN ADVANCE. ' TOL735^ YOEKYILLE, S. C., WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1871889. ~ NO. 38. ^ | fftftfe JUliante. HON. BEN TERRELL'S TALK A REPRESENTATIVE GATHERING OJ YORK COUNTY FARMERS. The National Lecturer of the Farmers' A1 lianoe Unfolds the OInjects and Aims o the Order Before the People, and Give Both Merchant and Farmer Some Sal lent Points that May be Pondered ovei to Their Mutual Advantage. Hod. Ben Terrell, national lecturer of the Farmers' alliance, was in Yorkville last Wednesday. His coming had been looked forward to with the keenest interest by the farmers of the county for several weeks, and when the day arrived the intelligent and representative crowd that was here to greet him, was one that any speaker might esteem it as the highest honor to have the privilege of addressing every section of York was represented by some of the best and most substantial formers in the county, and more than one observant individual was heard to remark that a more intelligent or determined-looking crowd has not been seen in Yorkville since the days of '76. They looked like they meant business, and hadn't come for a frolic; and if anyone has questioned the material of which the alliance is composed, last Wednesday was sufficient to set their doubts forever at rest. The alliance men must have been at least a thousand strong (there are five hundred members in the county) but they constituted scarcely more than half of the intelligent throng that congregated around the speaker's stand. There were quite a number of ladies present, too, both from the town and country, and the businessmen of Yorkville also turned out pretty generally to hear what the distinguished speaker had to say. Music for the occasion was furnished by the Gold Hill and Blairsville brass bands, which heading the procession of town, arrived at the stand, near the grade school, shortly before eleven o'clock. The speaker's stand was tastefully decorated with corn, cotton, oats, peas, pinders, okra, potatoes, forage plants and other splendid specimens of York county's agricultural products on the stalk and vine. Cotton bagging was substituted for the usual decorative bunting, and suspended on poles at conspicuous points were streamers of jute draped in crape. This, of course, was the work of the men. The handiwork of the ladies was displayed in the delicate finishing touches, consisting of beautiful vases of flowers and stems of pampas, which gave a pleasant and refreshing effect to the decorations so appropriate to the occasion. The exercises were opened at eleven o'clock with prayer by Rev. L. A. Johnson, chaplain of the Langham alliance and W. Norman Elder, president of the county alliance, introduced the speaker. Mr. Terrell spoke about an hour and three-quarters. He was listened to with the closest attention, and made a profound impression on all his hearers. He is a bright, fearless speaker, talks with ease and fluency, and does not seek to engender unreasonable class prejudices. His speech is calculated to do much good and no harm for which reason we take pleasure in repeating his speech. The speaker then gave a brief review of the objects, hopes, and desires of the powerful and rapidly growing organization, the Farmers' Alliance: MR. TERRELL'S SPEECH. Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Citizens: I deem that the most intelligent thing that humanity can do, is to do what is best for themselves. I claim that you are not only authorized by holy writ to do so, but that you are denounced for not doing it. "He that will not provide for his own household is worse than an infidel," said Paul, and I agree with him. Now I claim that the farmer has not only the right and privilege, but I bring it upon him as a duty, that he should do all in his power to benefit himself morally, mentally, commercially, and financially. I believe that it rests upon every man, and the man who will not make the most intelligent effort in his power to accomplish that, is derelict in his duty. Now comes up the question, What is to be done? It is useless for me to occupy time in discussing before this intelligent audience, or attempting to prove that we as producers, are not making money; that we are not educating our children; that we are not enjoying the proceeds of our labor. It is folly for me to prove these things. It is patent to everyone that they are so. If you were to give the wages made by merchants and professional men taking them as a rule, and taking their advancement, it would cost you fifty cents a pound to produce your cotton. A year were to get the cotton raised by skilled mechanics, it would cost twenty cents a pound, but you only get 8 cents a pound for it. It is the great money crop of the country, say what you will, and the great mass of the people are engaged in its production. South Carolina has 70 percent of her population, farmers, and 70 percent of the people of South Carolina are securing a pittance of wages which does not permit them to have their families made comfortable, much less to have them refined and educated, and fitted to take the positions they ought to occupy. Why is this? The reason is plain. We find right here that the farmers have only received seven or eight dollars a month for their labor. You, the white man, is worth no more than the freedman when it comes to doing your own labor. Then say it is worth seven or eight dollars a month. If you have your own horse, have your own labor and make a good crop, and sell it at a fair price. You can make some money or the farm; but as a general rule, where a man has to make it with his own hands whether on his own land or on another place, there is no money to be made out of; and when he sells his crop, it is at an actual loss. Now I want to say that to remedy the existing state of affairs requires an effort and a great effort by all the people. It requires united, organized effort. I want to say something right here—something of a digression from the subject perhaps—but I want you to look about you. I want you to look at the people who have succeeded and to call your attention to the fact that the organization has effected their success. I want to say that there is not a merchant in the town who does not belong to some mercantile organization. There is not a lawyer but what he belongs to his organization. Go to your doctors and you will find that they are organized, organized wisely, for a purpose. You can employ a lawyer who is a gentleman and belongs to his organization, if you have consulted another lawyer. He wouldn't take your case until you have gone to the other lawyer and paid him. If you could do that, you could consult every lawyer in the town, and get advice from all without paying them. So you see organization is necessary for their protection. Nobody blames them. No intelligent man blames another for making money if he can. Now, mark you, I don't blame the merchant. I don't blame the jute bagging trust, just so long as you permit it. Just so long as you permit them to extort money, they will extort it from you, and it is folly for us farmers to look for redress; except in ourselves. Now, gentlemen, will you make the effort? Will you, to organize? Will you, too, come out and sit down in consultation in the sub-alliances, and discuss your interests, and then after coming to wise conclusions, let the majority rule. And let every one of you act as a unit. I want to ask you the question in all seriousness, if any of you have joined the alliance with any other intention except to lay aside your personal desires and go according to the will of the majority? If you have, you have certainly gone into the wrong box. If you are not for benefiting the whole, you will certainly bring discord, and without concert of action, the attainment of our ends is an impossibility. But if you are willing to go and counsel with your brother and after reasoning with each other, follow the will of the majority? Acting in a unit? Then I say to you that success is ready to perch upon our banners, and I defy the world and every power outside to prevent the farmer from accomplishing everything he wants? If you submit to the one rule and are a unit. [Applause.] I want to say that this is truly. It is intelligent, and it will make you the conquerors. Do it. and safety is a consequence. If you do this, we can control the price of our products and sell them upon market that wants and is willing to pay a fair and correct price for them. [Applause] There is no other class of people that have acted as foolishly as we farmers have. Take the merchant, and if he has me chandised at a loss, he quits. If the doctor is losing money by his profession, he gives it up and goes at something else; if the lawyer finds that his pleading at the bar will not provide for his family, he will not continue it. There is not a stable man in any other avocation of life who will go on without considering me for the farmer, especially members of the farmer alliance, to a few remarks, and I think you will catch the expectations of the alliance from them. You are required to select with care, the best man from your alliance and instruct him as to your views to the county alliance, and whatever the majority of those determine, binds every sub-alliance in the county; and the men who go contrary is not keeping his obligation and should be expelled. That is a line, and that is a power that can control the greatest influence on the face of the earth. You elect the very best man you have got in your county alliance, without using money, whisky or other means of electioneering. Let him be the choice of the people, unbiased and free, stand out boldly as the choice of the county; the best man you have got. He goes to your State alliance, and I say it is intelligent that whatever those men—the best man you have got—sitting in council, say; say that it is intelligent that every allian man throughout South Carolina ought to do it. If you mean business, we are safe from being in council. Lightning is breaking, freedom is here, at those influences that have been so hurtful to the farmers of this country, can be restored and changed at our will. I think that when you have selected the best men you have? When you are thoroughly organized? You can tell through your representatives to the national alliance when to sell your cotton and when to buy it. With all the information before you, this body can instruct the secretary of the sub-alliance when to sell, and by putting the right amount of cotton on the market at the proper time, it will not be so difficult to say what you will take for it. But if you sell on your own hook as we have always been doing, the consequences will be the same old thing. If you rush cotton on the market without system and without consideration, the price drops, and do you go, selling your cotton at less than cost to produce it. Your only hope is in your organization, and every man must be true to it. You must not twist over when you see the best chance to sell your own cotton to advantage and leave your brothers in the lurch. While you are asking for your brothers to be true and faithful to the obligations, you must be careful to stand by your own. Don't ask them to stand by and hold down the balance while you stand in and get the chicken, by selling your own. Don't sell your cotton during the month of September? Not a bale before the first of October, or until you receive instructions from your county secretary. It will be informed on the 20th of September what to do, and I tell you that if you await his decision. Instructions, I will be responsible to every man who is the loser by it. Some of you may be obliged to sell to the merchant. The merchant must pay; but get your sub-alliance to hold your cotton? Don't apply to individuals. Now, I say gentlemen, I don't ask any man in the alliance to do what wrong. Now, I want to show you the power organization. When organized, your alliances are only six miles square, and you know every man in them. You agree to do just what the majority does. You send a man to the county alliance, and becomes a unit, and to the State alliance and it becomes a unit, and to the National alliance, and the whole of the cotton States are a unit. Now, my friends, it takes a man to do this duty. Every State can be represented. I hear of some of the county alliances talking of taking charge of the cotton crop and managing it. You can't do it. You must have your State established in the trade exchange. You must know how much of the crop is to be held, and how long before you can act intelligently. You must take all the information from the alliances in regard to how much of the cotton crop is on the market, how much is on your farms, and when factories want it, and thus be able to tell when to sell it. When a little county tries to manage such a question as this, it reminds me of the gentleman who got on the railroad and trying to butt the locomotive off the track. When the engine hit him it knocked him about forty feet. There was a fellow standing by watching him, and when the calf got knocked off the fellow cried: "Well, my little man, I admire your courage, but damn your direction." [Laughter.] Now I admire the pluck of the man that tries to control the cotton crop of the South with. One county's product, but?" "Darned his discretion." [Laughter.] "Well," said someone, "you can't get your price." Yes, you can, and it's just as easy as the Kansas girl knew her dad. A traveler from Arkansas rode up to a house one day and found a half-grown girl leaning up against the door post. "Who lives here?" asked the traveler. "Dad." "But who is dad?" "Why, don't you know dad." "No. "Why, law," she says, "I know dad as easy!" [Laughter.] And I want to say that we can accomplish the measure as easily as we can." Not a bit of trouble in the world as soon as you understand that you must come up and obey the majority. That is unity, the greatest thing on the face of the earth. It is the great absurdity. I like unity anyhow! I always like to see things united, and nature herself teaches that nothing is so abhorrent to her to see anything in her domain refuse. Watch the streams. Where do the Mississippi come from? From the mountains, in little springs, glad to unite with each other, glad at the prospect of union, where they form another stream and another, and another, until you can tell where they come from. Down the river to the sea, uniting at every opportunity until the great Mississippi flows unchecked toward the ocean. Now it is a power that nothing can control. Now, suppose the springs had said: "I won't mix my water with yours. I will keep on my own way." The selfish little old creek would have struck the sandy prairie somewhere and got dried up before it got started. So it is with the farmers who are not organized. What power have you got? What can you do? Some who are smarter than the alliance, put me in mind of the fellow on the jury who, when the judge was scolding about the delay in rendering a verdict, excused himself with the explanation: "Your honor, I have been ready all the time; but there are on the jury eleven of the most obstinate men I ever saw in all my life." [Laughter.] I call that man a dandy. Now if you are organized, gentlemen, I want to say that it means that if you do not obey the majority, it amounts to nothing. Is to no organization at all. If you are organized, you have the power to do all that you have. The single farmer is like the great I read about once in JEsop's fables. He was sitting on an ox's horn and finally was growing remorseful at his imposition, said: "Mr. Ox, if my weight is oppressing you, I will fly away." The ox replied: "Why, if you little fool, I didn't know that you were there." I want to say to you independent men, who think you can manage things, Commerce doesn't know you are here. It never heard of you. [Laughter and applause.] But I want to say to you, gentlemen, by way of encouragement, that if you had about two million gnats at that ox's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, that he would have been willing to have moved out. He would have known they were there. I want to say to all farmers, colored and white, that if they mean business and act upon a common basis, arranged by our most intelligent men, you have the power to say what your products are worth; and I want to say to you, farmers, that the farmer lives in the kitchen and the man who lives in the parlor can't get anything to eat unless you give it to him. [Loud applause.] The farmer is acknowledged by others to be the foundation on which they build. They call him the mud sill, and when that foundation turns over everything else has to flop over too. [Applause.] I don't want to talk about the rascalities of your merchants. I have nothing to do with that. I am not here to look after them or their interests. I was not appointed by you, as your national lecturer, to look after the merchants and the capitalists, but only after your tool interests—the interests of the farmer—and I propose to do that to the best of my ability. Now the proposition, gentlemen, of the alliance comes: That each sub-alliance of should be made responsible for its membership. You must see that no member of your alliance uses one yard of jute bagging if he can possibly get anything else. Now, if a man is going to use jute, go to see him and talk to him as a brother. Show him the harm he is doing. Show him that when we make great resolutions about what we are going to do and don't carry them out, the world laughs at us and ought to laugh at us, because you can show no reason why you can't use cotton bagging, except that you will lose a few cents on each bale of cotton. And if you won't stand this sacrifice of a few cents a bale for the sake of a righteous principle, all I have to say is, may the good Lord have mercy on the farmers. [Applause.] There is every reason why an intelligent man would use cotton bagging. Last year the bagging trust charged you 13,14 and 16 cents for their bagging. Now this year, forsooth, at Birmingham, they offered to sell it to us at 8½ cents for two pound bagging, and offered to pay two dollars more per ton for cotton seed, if we would use it. When we asked them, "What will you do next year?" they didn't have anything to say about next year. We didn't bite. I found out afterwards that the very men who were talking to your representatives, were making arrangements to sell out stock, stock and barrel, and that they would keep their obligations, of course? But the other parties, the purchasers, would not; and if you still use jute bagging, you ought to be skinned just that way forever, and I claim that it is good and proper, and we are manly and just in what we are doing. If there is an infernal thing in this warfare, it is that surprises me. When we first started by it, when the first Georgia alliance proposed to substitute cotton bagging, I expect I would see every merchant in the country come out through their exchanges and I say, make this cotton bagging for the farmers. They are our patrons, they are friends—they clothe and feed us. I did not expect that the intelligent merchants of this country would stand by us and crush out of existence what they themselves called and infamous trust. They have not done it; but if they had, they would have killed out the feeling of animosity that is growing up between country and town. We have in the country, people who feel that you merchants are here only to get what you can out of them. Then I say you are making a fatal mistake, now I want to say something to you about the newspapers. They have a great deal to say about the jute question, as well as others they don't know or care anything about. Frequently, you read some man's views about certain matters that he knows absolutely nothing about, and you farmers must believe it because it comes through the newspapers. The newspapers are not to blame. They don't know anything about it. They publish letters from this section and that section, and they say cotton bagging won't do. "It won't go through the compress." The News and Courier said that. Every issue had communications from this man and that man saying it wouldn't do. But when they got mighty little cotton they turned around and said they thought cotton bagging would do very well. "Oh, yes, cotton bagging is all right," they said; "cotton bagging will do first-rate!" Laughter. Mr. Wagner's drummer said to the farmer, "You are crazy. They are taking off cotton bagging and putting on jute bagging," and the News and Courier came out yesterday and said that it is not so. It was but one bale, and that was packed in bags. It was not but one bale! No man can hollers before he is hurt, and no dog howls before he is hit. [Laughter.] Let me tell you farmers it costs something to recover a bale of cotton. It costs something to put it into press again, and you might have known that it was another Charleston lie. >u Trying to get you to use jute, eh ? These s- newspapers are not all Bibles. [Laughter, >u and cries of we know that.] Yes, there >e are lots of people who are powerfully ina terested in giving us advice. They seem r- to be as much interested in our cotw ton crop as we are. Down at Chester, :; yesterday, when I was telling the farmers c- not to sell their cotton until October, there II was one man out in the edge of the crowd 08 who danced a regular hornpipe. He e- didn't want me to give them that kind ig oi auvice. r or me adorers sane, uon i o- tell them not to sell their cotton in Seple tember," he said. He didn't tell me, of t. course, but I afterward came to learn that ig this man has sold seven thousand bales ff, short for September! [Laughter.] If you I look for the reason for all this advice in s- the newspapers, you will see that they are not to blame. They print what this it man and that mun has to say about it. ;h They get the news indiscriminately, and is they will not be responsible for anyfs thing except their editorials. You must s, learn how to take them. What is an edir torial anyway ? It's nothing but the edin tor's opinion, and by G?, we have as d much right to our opinion as they have to st theirs. [Laughter and applause.] The id newspapers certainly have a right to their opinions, and thet-e newspapers, scattered " broad cast over the country, have a great sw deal to do with forming public opinion. They scared some of our alliance men as nearly to death and had their knees knocking together because the Liverpool exchange was against us. What on earth has the Liverpool exchange to do with it? Not a thing in the world. It makes no difference to it what we wrap our cotton in. Why, if you farmers stand together and organize your exchange, your agent has arrangements to ship your cotton directly. White and colored will mortgage to their cotton to sub-alliances and not to individuals. We will have the power to hold the cotton and say to the factor who wants to buy it: "Where it is. Here is so much cotton, and it is worth so much, and the bagging and ties are worth so much. We are willing to lose so much on them. Now, if you don't want it, you don't have to take it." You farmers don't sell your cotton. You take it to town and take what they give you for it. You haven't sold a bale of cotton in twenty years. It is your fault—not theirs; and you must not blame them for it. If I could have bought your cotton at my price, I would have done it. Now, I want to say a few words to you about the way you sell cotton at the present time. I want to disgust you with it, and if I don't disgust you before I get through, I think you must have a mighty strong appetite. You farmers come in with your cotton on your wagons. You bring it to town because you have no other place to sell. If you were to ship it to another place, it would be the same thing. What does the cotton buyer do? He takes his knife and goes around to the wagon and jumps on to flale and whacks it right across—not down, so it can be patched up again—but right across. He then jerks out just as much as he pleases. He says it's mighty good cotton, but it might not be so good on the other side, and he cuts it there and you stand by like the fat fellow that the call ran over, with not a darned word to say. You have had a drizzling rain on your cotton, and he says there is ten pounds of water in the bale. "Not that much, mister! Just look at my shirt. It's not wet at all," you say, and you try to beg and plead and explain. Why are you not in a position to tell him that it is your cotton, and if he doesn't want it he doesn't have to take it? But you know, and he knows you have to sell it. "Well, sir," the cotton man says, "we have to make this allowance, or we will lose." You never know, and cannot know what he makes allowance for water in your cotton, or how much he puts upon it unless you learn it from the Almighty on the day of judgment. [Laughter.] Now, if you understand this proposition, you will see at once how foolish you are for selling your cotton as you are selling it. You see, at the price you pay, you are the privilege of using the cotton, deducting the water and pricing it too. Suppose it held out? Every pound of it. Every pound you said was there was found to be there. Suppose it didn't lose over a pound or two pounds, even. Suppose he actually got middling fair for it. Do you reckon you will ever know it? As I said, the Lord may tell you on the day of judgment, but it is the only way. He puts the money in his pocket, and that's the end of it. Ain't you farmers ashamed to occupy such a position as that? You have mortgaged yourselves, and sell it because the mortgage is pressing you. You can't help it. You have to buy your goods from the merchant. You walk in there and the clerk throws down some goods and tell you his price. You say, "It's mighty high. I can buy it for less at Mr. Jones's." He says, "If you don't want it, don't take it," and you can't say anything, but just stand there and take it. Why don't you farmers stand together and take your cotton to the county agent, and if the speculator wants it, let him come for it. I want to say that right in my county we sell our cotton that way. We have the smartest business man in the county for a business agent, and he is the best business agent in the county. We never Stop in the street with our cotton. It is hauled to him. The buyer goes to Mr. Leggett (the agent) and says: "I want 100 bales of cotton. What will you take for it?" Whoever heard of that question being asked before? [Applause.] "Cotton is worth ten cents on a basis of middling," Mr. Torrorott enva on thpn flip two ficrPfi on *JVbbx",v """? -n- - -? the classification and then they weigh the cotton. The agent is right there to see it correctly weighed, and the gentleman makes no deduction for anything. "Well," some man says, "I can't afford to do that." Who can't? There is not a cotton man who does not tell you that he takes off thirty pounds for tare?twenty pounds for the bagging, and there are ten pounds left, What for? "Well," they say, "when you put this cotton on the platform, the cows eat some of it." [Laughter.] You have all seen cows eating cotton, I have no doubt. And when you go down to New Orleans, or some other big city, the wharves? these little fellows you see around the wharves?get a whack at it and steal some. A man will see him jerk a handful of it out and may holler at him, but that's about all. The policemen don't care anything about cotton. When you want to put cotton in the ship, some of the ends of the bales are larger than the others, so the stevedore grabs out some and throws it away. They hold all of it and pack it, ' Am*v? T IfM/vtit /\f nlr A/1 1 Q Ul uuuioCi uuc in in x niiuw wi |iav/ix^v4?v bales the last year I was in Texas, and sold it for their own cotton. Now you understand where that eight or ten pounds of cotton goes To when they ship it, and if it still has any of the ten pounds left when it reaches Liverpool, they put it in their pockets. Now is it not more intelligent for you to get together as a unit, put every bale in the State alliance, and let your county agent sample it, and let your State agent say what it is worth? The county agent can sell it as well as the State agent. He classes it, and he and the buyer agree as to what is a fair classification. Suppose there was a dispute. The county agent says, "Well sir, you needn't take that cotton. You don't have to, and we don't have to sell it." [Applause.] "Well," the fellow says, "you are making a heavy war on the cotton buyers." But no, sir, fellow farmers, I am making war on you. I don't blame the cotton buyer. The farmers of the country are to blame—making mere machines of them. Beies. oust if it's a little more than a mile, you are going ahead and making whatever you can without knowing the first thing of the cost of production. Unless you unite and organize and plan together you can quit it. Now you know what to do to succeed. Will you do it? I put the question plainly before you. I know what you have to accomplish, and you all know. If you come up and do your duty, you will accomplish it. There is nothing to keep us from it except a want of organization. Now we have the farmers' friends all over the country. That is, those who call themselves friends of the alliance. I want to tell you that the greatest enemy you have is the man who professes to be your friend and discourages you at every opportunity. The man who comes up and says: "I am with you, I would like to see the alliance succeed; but you will never get these farmers to stay together in the world." Now, if he really wanted you to succeed, he would never say any such thing as that. But he doesn't want you to succeed, and the hypocrite professes pleasure at your efforts while all the time trying to discourage you and destroy confidence. And, farmers, whenever you lose faith and hope, right then you quit work. You would never raise another crop of corn if somebody would convince you that you couldn't or wouldn't raise anything on your land that year. There is not a farmer in this county who would plant anything, and is it necessary for me to tell you that your confidence in yourselves is a necessity for your success. Now the man who breaks that confidence in any way must be regarded as an enemy, I don't care who he is; I don't care if he is the governor of your State. I don't know anybody in this county, and I don't want to know them when I am making a speech. No intelligent man who is in sympathy with the movement would do a thing of that kind to weaken your confidence, by eternally dining in your ears his fears of your success. Now before I close I want to say a few words about this grinding credit system. This burden of debt is making us cowards. You go to a merchant who probably holds a mortgage on your crop and tells him you want a little bacon, and he tells you that you are eating too much down at your house and he doesn't know whether he can let you have it or not. You belong to him and you have to bear it without a word. You even crouch your head and say with a smile that you are living on as little as you can. It's a shameful condition. Of course you ought to pay every debt you contract, but you have no business to contract debts you cannot pay. It is better to go in patches, and if you can't find enough patches of one color, put in other colors until you are clad in garments like Joseph's coat. I tell you it is more honorable to dress in rags and be independent than to be some rich man's peon. Come up and say from this time on, me and my family are going to do our duty. We are going to pay cash, and we are going to succeed. We had a young man in our neighborhood—a mere boy—supporting his mother and two sisters. He had not a thing in the world. Well, he rented a place and managed to procure some corn bread and sorghum to go on, and also raised some chickens. After working hard and getting his crop well started, he went to a merchant to get some supplies. But the merchant would not trust him. So he went back home and continued to live on his corn bread and sorghum and water. When we found out his circumstances, he had his crop well nigh raised; but we went to him and said that the way he had been treated was a shame, and told him that we would stand for him. He said that he was much obliged, but he was all through now, and didn't need it. That was ten years ago. That boy is now the most prosperous farmer in his county. He has never bought a thing on credit, has money in the bank, and has one of the most refined and intelligent families I ever saw. Now suppose you do have to live on bread and water and sorghum for a year or so, if you can be an independent man. Come out with that determination to your sub-alliance, where it will be brother helping brother. Take an obligation that you will not go in debt; make your word your bond and become honorable men. Your prosperity will be short-lived if you neglect building upon a good foundation. Talk it to your children and let them understand that the man who does his duty and not the man of wealth is the man God forbid that we should worship wealth. It is the most contemptible thing on the face of the earth! It serves no refinement nor no beauty of character. The man who tyrannizes over the poor because he has gone inches, is the most contemptible creature on the face of the globe. I don't say that wealth is not a good thing to have. If a man is a gentleman he is as good with it as without; but it's the gentleman—not the wealth. Don't have your wives and daughters trying to live up in style and go in finery because somebody else is able to do it. Tell them that piety and beauty of character are more in the eyes of a true man than all the finery that they could put on. Women are the best things on earth. They make us live better lives, by their very presence, and if it were not for then, how quick would go our religion and every good influence concerned with them. It is not the dress that attracts us, but the woman. Any good man loves a woman because she is a woman, and not because of what she has on. You farmers ought to understand that in paying the merchant, you are helping the alliance in the best possible way. If a merchant has trusted you, don't make way on him. If you become dissatisfied because he doesn't want to sell you reasonably, you should go and buy somewhere else. But don't bind yourself up to a merchant and cry about it when he skins you. Support your families. Get out of debt, and never get in that position again. If I could get every farmer who hears me speak to organize, there would be no cause for complaint in a very short time. I don't wish to say that the merchants don't extend from you. I know they do; but my friends, you would do the same. It is human nature, and if you could get a dollar a pound for your cotton, you would take it. The way for you to do is to bring about such conditions as that you will have a say so as well as the merchant. At present, they price your crop and they price your supplies, and it does not take a very smart man to make money under such conditions as that. The alliance will bring you out of this position if you stand by it. I will say another thing to you. There is some feeling against the lawyers. Men that is wrong; but if a lawyer has been caught in a questionable act, if he has done wrong, or has helped to pass laws that are detrimental to you and you know it, you should remember him. Lawsuits can't hurt you. They are like whisky, it can't hurt you so long as you let it stand in the bottle. [Laughter.] Settle your little differences at home. Can't you, as intelligent men, sit down and decide your little difficulties? If you can't, you can expect the lawyers to do it for nothing. An artist was courting a farmer's daughter once and the old man objected to his suit. Finally, he consented, if the artist would paint a lawsuit between farmers, and the artist got up his picture. It represented a squabble between two farmers over a cow. One had her by the horns and the other by the tail, and a lawyer or either side was milking her. On the other side of the canvas was another picture, in this the animal had kicked one farmer down and butted the other over the fence, and the two lawyers, who had already gotten all the milk, were running away with the cow. Lawyers are very necessary to settle titles to real estate and all that sort of thing, but keep them out of your personal quarrels and settle them yourselves. You farmers must let other people's business alone. You have plenty of your own to attend to. 