“Speaking of the newspaper business,” he said, of which we were not speaking at all, “I make considerable money advising the farmers to patronize the ‘Rural Home,’ than which, in my opinion, a greater literary thug never existed, but unfortunately for an oppressed people, the publisher of the ‘Home’ (his name is Litch; it should be Leech) pays liberal commissions, and I must live. I have a copy in my pocket; you may examine it when there is positively nothing else to do.”
He handed it to me, and although it was folded, I saw on the first page a picture of an animal so admirably proportioned that but little was wasted in legs, being solid meat with the exception of a small head and four pins to hold it up. By examining the note at the bottom, I found it was a pig, although I should not have suspected it in the absence of the statement, and that pairs of the breed could be had by addressing the publisher, and enclosing money order or draft for fifty dollars.
“If you should do yourself the injustice at some time in the future to look it over,” Mr. Biggs continued, indicating that I was not to look at it then, but to listen, “you would find it filled with all sorts of ingenious appeals for the farmer’s money, and that the editor claims to be poor, but honest, and oppressed by monopolies, like the rest of them. But what are the hard, uncomfortable facts?”
I looked at him as if to say that I did not know what the facts were, but had no doubt they were bad enough.
“The facts are that while the agricultural population is cooped up in hot school-houses drinking spring water, and attending Alliance meetings, the publisher of the ‘Rural’ is holding ice in his mouth at an elegant club, only changing this delightful occupation to gulp down expensive champagne. He lives in a villa, does this agricultural fraud of the name of Litch, and makes a fortune every year; and, although he earnestly advises the farmers’ wives and daughters to spend their spare time in churning the butter and gathering the eggs, to buy good books to improve themselves (P. S.--For which he is agent), he sends his own wife and daughters to spend their spare time in summer at cool places, where they may swim in the sea. That’s the kind of an oppressed citizen of a groaning government Litch is, and I happen to know that he is the friend of the monopolists he denounces, and that he is in their pay; that he is the tool of the thieves who manufacture worthless machinery for farmers; of the confidence men who advertise eggs, pigs and calves at a high price, and that he is the worst enemy of the farmers generally.”