It was an exceedingly tragic climax to the situation at Homestead, and not without influence in determining the sympathies of the Western farmers with the issues involved there. It had been amazing to me to discover how keen was the interest taken in the strike all along my route, and it was not a little significant, I thought, to find everywhere a strong indignation against the use of a private police force in accomplishing ends legal in themselves and fully provided for by law and usage. So far in the struggle the feeling of the farmers was with the men. Beyond that they appeared uncertain. There was a question of fact to begin with. Did the cut affect more the hands who were working for a dollar and a half a day or the skilled workmen who were reported to get, some of them as much as fifteen dollars? Until this was clear, there could be but speculation. Most interesting of all, I had found their attitude toward the question that was widely raised of a right the workmen were said to have in the property at Homestead, apart from their wages, on the ground of their having created its value. Here was the real issue of modern industrialism, and on it I found the farmers conservative, to say the least. The American farmer is a landed proprietor with a gift for logical tendencies that does him credit. His chiefest aim is to maintain, if possible, his economic independence, and a doctrine that would give to his hired man an ultimate claim to ownership in his farm is not one that is likely soon to meet with wide acceptance among his class. It was with the physician that I talked these matters over, and I was interested to find my experience confirmed by that of so expert an observer, whose chances were so good. Very reluctantly I parted from him at his door and made in the direction of Neola. Owing to rains that delayed me on Thursday, I did not enter Neola until the middle of the afternoon of that day, and there I did not stop in passing, but pressed on to Underwood, where I spent the night. Friday was clear again and hot, but the roads were difficult, and I had to desert them for the lines of the St. Paul and Rock Island railways, that parallel each other side by side for several miles into Council Bluffs. For the past day I had not had a single offer of a job. The farmers, as I approached the town, seemed either less in need of men or less willing to take up with a chance wayfarer. No doubt I should have had no difficulty had I set about a search for work. Certainly I could not have fared better than I did for dinner at a farm, where I was allowed to lend a hand with a load of hay. And after dinner, when the farmer and I talked together for an hour, I found in him the same contentment which struck me as so general among Iowa farmers.