Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1888 — Farm Mortgages and the Tariff. [ARTICLE]

Farm Mortgages and the Tariff.

We commend to the farmers of Michigan, and especially to those who are paying interest on farm mortgages, the foilowig from our esteemed contemporary, the Ann Arbor Democrat: “The report of the Commissioner of Labor shows that more than half of the farms of Washtenaw County are mortgaged today at an average rate of interest of over seven per cent. It is estimated that the mortgage indebtedness of this county is over $4,000,000. Never in the history of the county has the farming interest, as a whole, been more depressed than it is today. The causes of this Btate of things are two fold. First—The construction of the Suez canal and the vast extension of railroads in Southern Russia, Central Asia and India has brought those great wheatpiodneing regions into direct and easy

competition with the American wheatgrower. Second— A high tariff has checked and ruined our foreign trade. All trade is really barter. And foreign consumers of wheat buy their wheat where they can sell their goods. Under free trade England has been made the workshop of the world. Free trade has also given her control of the worid’s ocean commerce, and when her ships carry out her manufactured goods to Russia, India, Australia and other graingrowing countries, they don't go back empty and come empty to this country to procure wheat, but carry back wheat from the country where they sell their goods. We have lived under a high protective tariff for a quarter of a century, and the result is our commerce is driven from the ocean, and half of our farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy. And in the meantime England, under free trade, has usurped the commerce of the world, and the machinery and manufacturing industries of the little island do the work and secure to England the profits of 200,000,000 of laborers! When will the farmer realize that a tariff is nothing but a tax upon everything he buys, giviDg him absolutely nothing in return.” —Detroit Free Press.