Forty Years On The Firing Line

Excerpt from Forty Years on the Firing Line, or Scenes, Incidents, and Experiences Along the Way of a Soldier of the Cross If the reader shall become a sharer in the blessings of which the writer has been made a partaker, in pass ing this way, then this book will not have been written and published in vain, and the reward will be ample! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

James W. Witham, born in 1856, was a journalist and advocate for the rights and concerns of farmers. In Fifty Years on the Firing Line, Witham traces his childhood in Ohio and his political coming of age in the Midwest during the mid-nineteenth century. While working as a farm laborer in Nebraska and Iowa, Witham started canvassing for farmer's rights in a farmer's paper, The Western Rural, a practice he continued for many years. In the fall of 1878, he met the populist leader, Gen. James B. Weaver, the first of many influential political leaders who became the subjects of his writing. He wrote about the origins of the Farmer's Alliance organization while playing a role in its formation. By 1882, he was attending state legislative sessions in Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota as a reporter and advocate. In this book, he discusses some of the legislative struggles that pitted farmers against big business and offers reasons why farmers should be allowed to form organizations to advocate their cause. Witham also criticizes the practice of railroad companies providing free riding privileges to journalists and elected public officials, contending that this practice biased these professions in favor of the railroads. He became well-known for his advice columns in the St. Paul Daily News, signed as "The Cornfield Philosopher." The bulk of Witham's experiences discussed here reflect his long residency in Iowa. There is, however, a wealth of information about Minnesota politics of the 1910s and early 1920s.