Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1888 — RAIDING THE FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

RAIDING THE FARMERS.

A High Tariff Organ’s Barren Attempt to Organize Another Scheme to Plunder. The New York Tribune’s Gauzy Scheme to Delude and Hoodwink the Farmers. [From the Louisville Courier-Journal.] The New York Tribune, recognizing the waning power of protection even in New York and in New England, turns with desperation to the farmers of the West and South, crying, “Help us, Cassius, or we sink.” ' ' The attempt to delude the farmers with the idea that they can be helped by protection is as hopeless an undertaking as any newspaper ever entered on. As a political movement it is doomed to failure, and its only justification from a newspaper standpoint is that, like sending explorers in search of the North Pole, or inventors up in a balloon, it advertises the resources and the enterprise of the newspaper connected with it. Indeed, as a reckless and open scheme, it surpasses the Herald’s plan to find the North Pole and bring it into New York harbor, and the World’s arrangement for solving the problem of aerial navigation. As the beginning of its plan the Tribune addressed a number of letters to farmers everywhere, calling attention to the depressed prices of farm products, hinting

that it was due to the large importation of wool, eggs, potatoes, etc., and suggesting that the real remedy was an extension of protection to the farmer. The farmers were asked to submit their to the Tribune, and these letters were to be put before a committee, mostly of protected manufacturers, to examine and pray over, and then they were to be made public, as an expression of the farmers on the tariff, with the expectation that it would have the effect to stiffen the backbone of the Republicans in Congress from the West, and make them “stand firm” against any redaction whatever in the tariff. The committee of eminent “agriculturists* selected to revise aud edit this correspondence was composed of Warner Miller, a noted manufacturer of paper, who has had a fortune transferred from newspaper publishers to himself by the tariff; William M. Grosvenor, who once wrote a free-trade book, “Does Protection Protect?” but who surrendered his views in order to obtain a position on the staff of the New York Tribunt; John T. Reid, Edward Burroughs, J. D. Lyman, and J. N. Hall. The Hon. James Wilson, of lowa, was asked to co-operate with these gentlemen in manufacturing this campaign thunder, but rather than be caught in such company, he fled to Texas or Mexico, beyond the reach of the wires of the New York Tribune. It is thought he will not return till the storm blows over. These gentlemen, after pondering over and inwardly digesting the facts submitted to them, felt that the only remedy for the deplorable state of affairs was to circulate the following petition: To the Speaker of the House of Representatives: The undersigned respectfully pray that agriculture may be more effectually protected by preventing fraudulent importations of cattle on pretense that they are for breeding only; by a duty of 20 cents per bushel on barley, with proportionate morease of duty on malt; by duties of 25 cents per bushel on potatoes aud onions, $2 per 100 on cabbages, $3 per ton on hay, 10 cents per pound on hops, 20 per cent on beans and peas, 5 cents per dozen on eggs, 30 per cent on fowls and poultry, and on vegetables in their natural state or in salt or brine, not otherwise provided for, with no removal or reduction of duties on market garden products now dutiable; by such increased duties on flax and linen goods as will effectually encourage the preparation of fiber and manufacture of goods; by abolishing all duties on sugar, with a bounty to home producers; by preventing imports of leaf tobacco suitable for wrappers at the duty imposed on other leaf tobacco, and repealing all internal taxes on tob&coo; by restoring to wool growing the substantial protection enjoyed under the tariff of 1867, so modified as to meet the latter forms of foreign competition and of evasion. It seems, therefore,\hat after twentyeight years of protective tariff, under which the farmers have been robbed to enrieh the manufacturer; after the experience of a generation in which the wealth of the farmers, one-half of the population, has increased four thousand millions, and the wealth of the other half of the population has increased twenty-four thousand millions, Mr. Warner Miller and Mr. Grosvenor discover the tariff is defective, and as a remedy suggest an import duty of 20 cents on barley, 25 cents on potatoes, and $2 per 100 on cabbages. This is statesmanship of the modern American school. Our agriculturists have paid half of the war debt; they have iu exchange for their products in competitive markets brought to this country hundreds of millions of dollars in gold, and thus restored onr currency to a specie basis; they send out of the country hundreds' of millions of farm products; sell unprotected in foreign markets: and when they seek to bring home in exchange for wheat, cotton, etc., such goods as they are given, the cus-tom-house officer—who is the representative of such freebooters as Warner Miller and Andrew Carnegie—confiscates onethird of all their foreign customers were willing to give in exchange. This is the situation, and these quack doctors, these sham statesmen, these political voudooists, suggest “more protection” on onions, hops, beans and peas. To circulate such a petition is an insult to the farmers of America. This movement for advertising the Tribune rests on the supposition that the farmers are nine-tenths fools and one-tenth knaves. The American farmer understands that the tariff is a gigantic- scheme of highway robbery. He knows that Miller, Carnegie & Co. are plundering him daily. He knows that when they propose to divide the spoils of their raids they are dishonest. He knows that if these men stop robbing the farmer, and take him into partnership, there is no other class to be robbed with any surety of safety and profit. The tariff is beneficial to one class only as it is hurtful to another. It builds up A by breaking dowu B. For Ato say to B let us join forces and plunder each other is an absurdity. Or, if you please, divide the community in three classes—A the manufacturer, B the farmer, and C the mercantile, transportation and professional men. A has been robbing B and C; novate says to B let us plunder C, and you have onetenth of the spoils. B is not to be deceived or tempted by any such scheme. All he asks is to be allowed to sell in the highest market and buy in the lowest, leaving at the custom house on his return only enough to meet the necessary expenses of an economical government.