Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1882 — THE FARMEE AND THE TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

THE FARMEE AND THE TARIFF.

The Outrageous Manner in Which Fanners are Fleeced Under Pretense of Protecting American Industries. [From a speech in Congress by Hon. Oscar Turner, of Kentucky.] Sir, is it just ? Is it right that the agriculturist of this country should be discriminated against in this manner ? Where is the protection given our labor ? There is none. The honest farmer asks none; but he does demand equality under the law, and he has a right to it. Sir, I have been a farmer all my life, and 1 have felt and understood the burdens under which we labor, and the injustice done the farmers of the country, and the doctors, lawyers, artisans and laborers of the land. Here is a statement showing a few of the burdens of the farmer: Under this tariff he rises in the morning, puts on his common flannel shirt, taxed 95 per cent.; his coat, taxed 57 per cent.; shoes, taxed 35 per cent.; and hat, taxed 92 per cent.; takes the water from a bucket taxed 35 per cent., and washes his face and hands in a tin bowl taxed 35 per cent.; dries them on a cheap cotton towel, taxed 45 per cent. He sits down to his humble meal and eats from a plate taxed 50 per cent, with knife and fork taxed 35 per cent.; drinks his coffee with sugar taxed 68 per cent.; seasons his food with salt taxed 69 per cent.; pepper, taxed 61 per cent. He looks around on his wife and children all taxed in the same way; takes a chew of tobacco taxed 199 per cent., or lights a cigar taxed 118 per cent. And, sir, even the sunlight from heaven that pours into his humble dwelling must come through window glass taxed 59 per cent., and yet he thinks he lives in the freest Government under heaven. Then he starts to work; puts a bridle taxed 35 per cent, on his horse, and takes liis horse that has been shod—the nails used in shoeing being taxed 59 per cent.; driven by a hammer taxed 20 per cent.—and hitches him to a plow taxed 45 per cent., with chains taxed 85 per cent.; and, after the day’s labor is closed and his family are all gathered around, he reads a chapter from his Bible, taxed 25 per cent., and kneels to God on an humble carpet taxed 51 per cent.; and then he rests his weary limbs on a sheet taxed 45 per cent., and covers himself with a blanket that has paid 104 per cent. Nor do these grasping manufacturers stop here, but even the broom with which his good wife sweeps the floor is taxed 35 per cent.; and the cooking vessels used in preparing her husband’s frugal meal are taxed 42 per cent.; and the soda used to lighten his bread is taxed 59 per cent. She sits down to her sewing with a needle taxed 25 per cent., and a spool of thread taxed 74 per cent., to make a calico dress taxed 85 per cent.; or, if she wishes to knit warm socks to protect her husband and children from the bitter cold, she uses yarn taxed 120 per cent.; and thus, daily and hourly, must the hard earnings of the laborer go to satisfy the manufacturer and add to his ill-gotten wealth. But, sir, we are told that this tariff system is necessary to protect American labor and industries; under what clause of the constitution of our fathers do gentlemen find the power and the right to tax the honest farmer—to take from him the fruits of his hard labor and put it in the pocket of the manufacturer—to enhance the value of his labor? Give us equal rights. You have no right to tax 45,000,000 of our people to enrich 5,000,000; no, only one and a half million, for the operatives do not get the profit or bonus. You live in a country abounding in the raw material—the iron, coal, cotton at your very doors. The broad ocean, across which the manufactures of Europe have to come, gives you all the protection you need or ought to have. You have been protected in your infancy, you have grown to manhood, and do not keep up your cry for “protection.” You have got most of the banking capital; have got the bonds; you got them for 40 cents to 60 on the dollar, and in God’s name you ought to be satisfied. If manufactories will not pay, why you have no right, legal or moral, to tax others to keep them up; but, gentlemen, you know that they will pay, you know that they ship plows to England and machinery of various kinds and sell them lower than they do here, and then make a fair profit. You know that while we only make 3| to 4 per cent, in agriculture your iron lords are realizing 30 and 60 per cent., and that you are making an average of over 30 p*er cent, on all manufactured commodities; but you are not satisfied, and the American people will have to rise in their might and assert their birthright to be free. The shackles of slavery have been struck from the African, yet you hold in slavery the white men of the country, the toiling masses, and compel them to pay you tribute on the necessaries of life, and deny to them the right to exchange the fruits of their labor for the commodities they need in the markets of the world. It is an outrage. [From the Detroit News.] Notwithstanding the doleful forebodings of a few weeks ago, when the Michigan and Indiana wheat was sprouting, the wheat crop this year is going to be enormously greater than any preceding one. The State of Illinois alone will produce 50,000,000 of bushels, or about one-quarter of what would have been considered a fair crop for the whole country a few years ago. The total crop is estimated at 600,000,000 bushels by some good authorities, and none at less than 500,000,000. It will be safe to rest half way between these figures. The crops of corn, oats and barley, fruit and roots of all sorts are also greater than usual, and it looks as if we should have such a quantity of food to export as would feed the whole earth and tax our railroads and lake shipping beyond their capacity. General prosperity will prevail, and the Republican party and the tariff monopolies will claim the whole credit of it, but nothing could more clearly prove that it is not the protected manufacturer, but the unprotected farmer, that makes our country smile with abundance. While the farmer who produces all this wealth will be compelled to compete in the markets of the world against the pauper labor of Russia, of India, of Egypt, of France, of Germany, of Italy, of Great Britain and of Ireland—for his wheat will meet rival wheat from nil these countries when it gets to market —he will have to pay tribute to the steel maker of Pittsburgh and Chicago in increased freight over protected rails; he work, on every nail m his buildings; the cotton monopolists will squeeze him on

his clothes and on his blankets, and the luml>er maker will have a share out of him for every piece of wood worked on his farm. These are all protected by the tariff at his cost. He is not protected at anybody’s but his own, and if the soil were not so rich and so cheap, enabling him to pay all these exactions, he would be poor indeed.