A Farmer’s Scathing Critique of the Economic Machine
A North Yakima farmer writes a letter to the census bureau expressing his outrage at the plight of the working class versus railroads and trusts.
The story, cleaned up
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The superintendent of census for the eleventh enumeration of the United States has been informed that my farm is mortgaged and making my neglect to give information a misdemeanor. I feel privileged to say your enumerator was mistaken. Rather than mortgage my lands and then work them for railroads, trusts, and tax-gatherers, I would sell at once and take up my residence with the county poor. How can things be otherwise than they are when the farmer must sell his produce at market price, which is usually below the cost of production, while the railroads and middlemen charge all the freights the business will bear? Before the railroad was built, the farmers' granaries were not empty; now, our towns are boomed into cities, built by outside capital and burdened with heavy interest charges. It is a crime against the people that knaves or fools are appointed to do their work.
“I sincerely hope that a regard for truth may prevail to the extent that the lying motto on our coins, 'In God we trust,' may be replaced by the legend, 'God help the rich; the poor can beg.'”
This letter echoes the recurring tension between agricultural producers and the logistical and financial monopolies that control their markets—a theme that persists in modern debates about corporate agriculture and local economic sovereignty in the Yakima Valley.
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