He was a wonderful man, this Wallingford, a genius, a martyr, a being made in his entirety of the milk of human kindness and brotherly love; but this rapidly growing organization that he had formed was more wonderful still. They could see as plain as print what it would do for them; they could see even plainer than print how, with the certain knowledge of the price to which wheat would eventually rise, they could safely dabble in fictitious wheat themselves, and by their enormous aggregate winnings, obliterate all boards of trade. It was a conception Titanic in its immensity, perfect in its detail, amazing in its flawlessness, and not one among them who listened but went home that night--J. Rufus Wallingford's seal-leather pocketbook in his pocket, J. Rufus Wallingford's box of lace handkerchiefs on his wife's lap, J. Rufus Wallingford's daintily dressed French doll in his little girl's arm, J. Rufus Wallingford's toy engine in his little boy's hands--but foresaw, not as in a dream but as in a concrete reality that needed only to be clutched, the future golden success of the Farmers' Commercial Association; and on the forehead of that success was emblazoned in letters of gold: "$1.50 WHEAT!" CHAPTER XXIV THE FARMERS' COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATION DOES TERRIFIC THINGS TO THE BOARD OF TRADE The holidays barely over, Wallingford was upon the road again, and until the first of May he spent his time organizing new branches, keeping the endless chain letters booming and taking subscriptions for his new journal, the _Commercial Farmer_, a device by which he had solved the grave problem of postage. The _Commercial Farmer_ was issued every two weeks. It was printed on four small pages of thin paper, and to make it second-class postal matter a real subscription price was charged--five cents a year! For this he paid postage of one cent a pound, and there were eighty copies to the pound. He could convey his semi-monthly message to a million people at a cost of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, as against the ten thousand dollars it would cost him to mail a million letters with a one-cent stamp upon them. And five cents a year was enough to pay expenses. On the first of May, the enterprising promoter, who seriously aspired now to become a financial star of the first magnitude, took a swift thousand-mile journey to the offices of Fox & Fleecer, where Mr. Fox, polishing, as always, at his glazed scalp, was still intent upon that bland but perplexing secret problem. Mr. Wallingford, as a preliminary to conversation, drew his chair up to the opposite side of the desk and laid upon it a check book and a package of documents with a rubber band around them. "Four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and negotiable securities," he stated, "and all to buy September wheat." Mr. Fox said nothing, but unconsciously his palm went to the top of his head.