Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1888 — Why the Farmer Suffers. [ARTICLE]

Why the Farmer Suffers.

The fact is a high protective tariff hat not done, and cannot do, for the country what its friends claim for it. A high tariff cannot furnish a home marketfor the vast productions of this giant country with its illimitable resources. Nature never designed that a nation like this, embracing every variety of climate and Boil, unparalleled tn mineral and other resources, watered by mighty rivers and inland seas, and surrounded by great oceans, free highways for our commerce to the homes and habitations of more than a thousand millions of people, should be limited in its productions to the consuming capacity or sixty millions. No financial and industrial depression ever caused in this government greater distress and more widespread dismay and desolation than were witnessed from 1873 to 1879 and from 1882 to 1880. Our ability to produce is so much in excess of our capacity to consume, large portions of our manufactured and agricultural productions are annually left on the bands of the producers for want of a market. Our farmers have to 6©ok a foreign market for more than 20 per cent, of their surplus productions and 45 per cent, of the surElus of their wheat, and where it has to 0 sold in competition with the wheat raised by the cheap labor of India, Russia, Fiance, Hungary, Spain, Italy and Turkey and where the price is fixed upon evory bushel of wheat raised for market in the United States. Thus, while the farmer is compelled to soil his surplus wheat in tho cheap markets of the world, he is not permitted to buy such articles as ho may need to operate his farm or for the comfort of himself and family, but is forced to purchase all such necessaries in the home market at an increased price of 45 per cent, on the dollar.—Hon. Jonas Howard, of Indiana, in House Debate.