Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/139

Rh with problems outside my personal touch and comprehension. But the principle is true."

"How about labor? Isn't it sadly twisted? Will the same principle work?"

"I don't pretend to know. I am a bit of a specialist in my way, after all. But this is how I look at that. Perhaps we have really all got to come back to the soil, to begin over again, after some terrible revolution. Yet it would not be progress to demolish all that has been done in labor-saving devices, to crush manufacture and commerce.

"But, there are forty million farmers to four million labormen. The latter are organized. The farmers are beginning to think about it. They have been ignored too long in great national questions. Like the coal strike. They have yet to begin to know their own strength. And they can begin right. When they organize they must do it fairly to all. They must have sympathy extending beyond the mere scale of their produce to the consumer. They can live well themselves and help others to live well by giving them their best at a fair rate. They are still the backbone of the nation. They can eliminate the middlemen, they can show that they are fair. They can slay the Big Dragon—Graft!"

"A farmer President?" she queried.

"Why not? It takes as much brains to run a big holding, agricultural, horticultural, cattle, horses, sheep, to run it right, as it does any other enterprise. He would have the votes behind him."

"Women's votes as well as the men's. It is growing dark. Shall we go back for some music before