“Are these words from the Psalms meaningless?  ’Deliver me from the oppression of Man; so will I keep thy precepts.’

“There is vitality in this cry from the oppressed; because the oppressor exists.  You and I are both victims of oppression.

“I am a producer of wheat, the great staple of this country.  You are all consumers of my product.  When I cannot make a living by producing wheat, and you cannot purchase it without paying tribute to a band of speculators, there must be in operation a damnable system of oppression to bring about this condition, for it is not natural.

“The Wheat Trust determines what price I shall receive for my wheat; it sets the price at which you shall buy it in the form of bread.

“Whether there is a bounteous crop or a short one, the Trust still controls the wheat and flour and arbitrarily fixes their price.

“When the newspapers assert that the farmers enjoy the advance of the price of a season’s crop, they state an absolute falsehood.

“By the system that prevails in this country to-day, as a result of the Wheat Trust, crops are sold a year in advance.  There are never two years of exceptionally large crops; so the benefit of the advance of one year does not go over to the next.

“The farmers of this country are compelled, by the present system, to pledge their next year’s crop to the local wheat factors who control the elevators.  The purchase price is determined by the factor.  The farmer receives a certain number of bushels of ‘seed’ wheat from the factor, agreeing to repay him with two or two and a half bushels of the coming crop; a large percentage of the remainder of the crop is pledged to the local store-keeper for the goods that the farmer must have to do his work and to live upon.

“Wheat is the medium of exchange.  The Trust’s price is the measure of value.  Why?  Because the farmer cannot sell to any one except to an agent of the Trusts, as the Trust has arranged traffic rates with every railroad; and the wheat, if bought by any one outside of the Trust, could not be transported to a market and sold at a profit.  This statement is indisputable.

“The Wheat King, David Leach, depresses the market when the crop is to be sold, and so gives a semblance of reason for the inadequate price he allows the farmer.

“It is the farmer who does the planting; he has to run the risk of the loss of the crop by drought, or excessive rain; he has to do the harvesting.  Yet he does not share in the just profits of the sale of his product.

“And the consumer is made to pay exorbitantly for the bread that keeps life in his body.

“If there were no Wheat Trust, no speculation in wheat and no discriminating traffic rates, bread could be sold at a fair profit for three cents a loaf, and the farmer would still be able to get a higher price than he averages now.