Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1884 — FARMERS AND THE TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

FARMERS AND THE TARIFF.

H*w the Protective System Affects the Agricultural Interests of the ■" Country. Ths Homs Market Cry a Humbug and a Delusion. The following are extracts from the speech of Congressman Thomas J. Wood, of Indiana, during the debate on the Morrison bill: Protection compels the farmers, numeriioally ths greatest class of consumers, to pay high prices for all they buy,while they are compelled to sell the products of the farm at free trade prices. The protective tariff establishes the price of manufactured artioles at home, but fails to establish a price for wheat and beef. That is fixed in the free trade markets of the world. Farmers buy under protection and sell under free trade. High protection makes high prices for imported goods. If tbe domestic manufacturer sold his goods cheaper than the imported artlole they would exclude the latter from our mark- ts. The home manufacturer will not compete with the Importer, because It is against his Interests to do so. He wants enough of the imported article to come into our markets re pay the high duties and establish prices. That is the index for the home product. The prioes of domestic manufactured goods will not be fixed by home competition under high protection. We can have competition among domestic manufacturers only by enacting a prohibitory tariff to exclude Imports altogether or have no tariff at all. The manufacturers do not want a high prohibitory tariff nor free trade. They want a high protective tariff that admits foreign goods to our markets on payment of high duties, and they take the price of the importer, after duties are paid, for their price. Here is an example: The Government received about $30,000,0)0 of revenue from the import of manufactured woolens last year. The home product amounted to four times the Imported article, or about $200,000,000. The average duty on woolens Is about 85 per cent, ad valorem. Tbe importer paid the Government thirty millions In duties, charged it to tbe selling price of his toods, and our people purchased them aad paid the duties; but when the people purchased the two hundred millions of the home-manufactured article they paid no less price for it than they did for the imported article. If the people could buy the home product cheaper, would they buy the imported articled Certainly not. There is I no difference in the prices of the imported and domestic article. Tbe farmers and other consumers pa/ 65 per cent, on two hundred millions of the domestic product which goes to the benefit of the manufacturer. This tribute given and none returned brln.s periodical distress to the farmer, and he is met with the sneering query, “If you have anything to sell, can not you get a good prioe for it?” He has sold his products to the minimum, and has saved little or nothing from tho prices received, for the reason that the tariff has robbed him, silently robbed him, at the end of a series of years. He has sold at Liverpool prices Instead of the promised high prioes of the home market. No class of men work harder and save less than tbe average farmer. We are told that the farmers have prospered under protection. They have prospered in one w ay, and that is in the increased value of their farm lauds, j which came by crowded set lements and Shipping facilities. Value their lands at SSO per acre, count cost of labor, fencing, farming implements burdened with protection prioes in all their parts keeping workhorses, and they can not raise wheat for less than 80 cents £er bushel and corn for less than 39 cents. I agree that Western farms show evidence of prosperity; but how many years of patient toil do they represent? You must go back forty or fifty years for a beginning on these farms. If protection has made good • farms, It has been slow indeed. A man | works forty years from daylight to darkness j upon bis farm, makes himself a hard taskI master, and, if he is economical in his living, ! before he dies he can build a barn worth SBOO 1 and a house worth $1,500 to $2,000. Yes, farms look prosperous by a lifetime of toil I and close ecouomy. Tell me this is tbe fruit of a protective tar- ! iff. No; that yields him exceeding bitter 1 fruit.' All the farmer wears and uses In his business from bis pocket-knife to a tin pan is fdreed up to double its value by tariff law, while he sells his farm products at home and abroad for prices fixed by competition in Europe. Talk to the farmers about pauper labor! They are forced to sell their wheat at Liverpool, If they sell at all, and there they qome In direct competition with tho pauper labor of the Baltic, where only $lB per year is paid for farm labor, and a worse competition with the labor of Egypt. Why tbe anxiety to protect manufacturing industries, many of them over fifty years old and worth millions of dollars, from the pauper labor of Europe, while you see the large body of agriculturists, on whom the prosperity of the country depends, selling the products of their labor in competition with the poorest of all pauper labor, the unskilled labor of Egypt?

The promise of protection is a home market for farm products. That is a humbug. The American people can not and never will consume the produots of the American farms. To do that you must Import twenty million people and put them in the factories and workshops. Then a worse result would follow on the other side—overproduction of manufactured articles. In 1880 the American people only consumed 64 per cent, of the farm products. I heard a Western farmer say: “Why, see for yourself. Take the surplus of six great farm States, then count the number of people protected and their employes, and each one of them would have to oat six barrels of flour per day, a ton of beef, one tbousand pounds of bacon, ohew a hogshead of tobacco, and drink twenty gallons of Kentucky whisky.” It is nonsense. They advise less farmers. That would not Increase consumption and would not lessen production materially, as improved farm machinery takes the plaoe of men on the farm. The home market for farm produots goes farther away every year. In 1800 the farmers raised $170,000,000 in whoat, and exported $4,070,764, or 2*4 per cent, of tho product. In 1870, high-protective tariff year, they produced $550,000,000 in wheat, and exported $47,171,229, or 14 per cent, of the product, in 1880, same tariff, they produoed $426,000,000 in wheat, and exported $190,546,805, or 86 por cent, of the total product. The export of pork will average $70,000,000 annually sinoe 1870, excepting the time of the French and Herman interdiction. Tho export of beef and beef cattle exceeds this during the same years. There was also a large export of corn aDd provisions. Farm products overstock the borne markets more and more every year, though protection has been on trial for nearly thirty years to fulfill the great promise of a home market for the products of the farm. It is a failure. The splendid soil of the Great West and South will always produce a large surplus. The seasons never fail to bring ft from mother eai th. What shall we do with iff I answer, sell it in the markets of the world and bring the gold and products of other countries homo. Gold is enduring wealth. It is unlike the exchange of commodities that soon perish Protection is the great barrier to the world's markets for our agricultural and manufactured produots. The people of other countries will not trade with us if we make trade expensive to them by payment of high duties. The Government can not enact laws making international commerce expensive to foreign peonies and then ask them to bby of us what wo have to sell but not buy of them unless they first pay high duties for the privilege of selling goods in our markets. The trouble is we treat the rest of the world unfairly. We want free trade when we sell our products to othor countries, but have high protection against the people of other countries selling to us. Many countries have retaliated and others are doing so. The French aud German exclusion of American pork, a great farm product, was only retaliation. I admonish the farmers to vote for their own interest upon this important question, for tho foreign markets in American cereals and meats Is threatened by

> our high protective policy against tho commerce of the world. When tbe open markets of the world are closed to the American farmer, what will he do with hia surplus? England, our greatest foreign market, is encouraging wheat-raising in India, where twelve bushels to the acre can be produced by the crudest farming, and in 1881 and 1882 she received from India, nearly 40,000,000 bushels of wheat, against 75,000,000 from America. Do our farmers know how important tho foreign markets are to them? Over $600,000,000 worth of American farm products are sold in foreign markets annually. Break down this great market by continuing your protective policy, and where will this $600,* 000,000 surplus go? As I have said, the commercial traders of other countries will not permit America to build up a great tradewith them in agricultural products whea America closes her ports to their trade by high protective duties, and heavily taxes our people to do it that a favored class may prosper. The farmer is told that there is a tariff upon farm products, but how does that bene-’ fit him? Not any. Why? Will farm products in any considerable quantities be shipped to the United States when onr own farmers; produce more than they want and have a. large surplus to sell in the world’s markets? When our farmers raise grain and provisions, and sell them in the open markets of tho world against all competition, will the agricultural products of other oountries come toAmerica? It is very plain that the tariff duties levied upon farm products is no benefit, to the farmer and may just as well be taken from the list. Without foreign markets; wheat will rot In tbe stack and provisions go ■to waste. Farmers are advised by the protectionists to quit farming; only produce enough for home consumption. Then the laboring people would bear the burdens of dear bread and meat. That policy would lessen production, but what kind of a policy: is that? Lessen the business of farmers to increase other Industries! Cramp one great industry for the benefit of another is strange advice indeed. Prosperity* will net result that way. New England wants her cotton-mills protected, but extends no protection to the Western flouring-milL. Pennsylvania insists on high protection for iron and steel, but cares, not for Western wheat flour and meats, and she could not give protection if she would. If it were possible to compel New England and Pennsylvania to pay a duty of 60 to 100 per oentupon every barrel of flour and every dollar's worth of Western hams and beef, butter and cheese she oonsumed it would even up the tariff and be fair; but Congressmen oould not sleep until it had removed such duties, for all New England would be in Washington before twenty-four hours. Yet New; England receives, by a law of Congress, a. tribute of 50 to 100 per cent, from the West-, ern farmer upon her manufactured products,! and holds on with the grip of death. It i - not fair. It is not right.