Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1888 — Farmers, Read This. [ARTICLE]

Farmers, Read This.

“I am very anxious,” said Congressman McDonald, of Minnesota, to the Chicago Herald Washington correspondent, “that this Congress shonld do something with the tariff. My people are for tariff reform, and on that issue the whole State is aroused. There are many Scandinavians in my district, and throughout the State some thirty thousand, I believe, and it is their custom to vote solidly for what they want. In the old country they enjoy free trade. While they have affiliated in our State for twenty-five years with the Republican party, they are becoming wear.v and feel the party doctrine of protection somewhat irksome. When I was on the 6tump a year ago a great, tall, stalwart Scandinavian came up to me and said he had just been home to the old country to see his relatives and the old farm which gave him not only his birthplace but his name, after the custom of his people. He said: * I bought a pitchfork to-day, and. do you know, I bought the same make bf fork for my old father in Christiana six weeks ago for just a third less than this fork cost me to-day. Now, why is that? We are plain country folks here, and when we vote for something we would like to know what it is and why we do not get it.’ Tbe man told the truth. It was possille for him to go to Christiana and buy American manufactured things for less money than he could do it here at home. It was the most powerful argument that I met with in the whole course of my campaign in favor of a lower tariff. A little fact like that will travel faster and accomplish more than the most powerful speech that will be made this session, and if I go home next summer I want to be able to tell my people that they can buy pitchforks just as cheap in Minnesota as they can in Christiana.”