Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1888 — The Home-Market Delusion. [ARTICLE]

The Home-Market Delusion.

“The development of our country," said General Harrison in a speeoh delivered to a delegation of voters, “must be on those lines that benefit all our people. Any development that does not reach and beneficially affect all our people is not to be desired and cannot be progressive or permanent," Exactly. But these words must have sounded strangely in the ears of some of those who had just been listening to a speech mainly devoted to the beauties of a high-tariff system and the desirability of building up a home market for the farmers. The friends of the high tariff have been getting ready to provide thut home market for a great many years, but it is still in the dim distance and appears to be moving farther away. Prices for farm produce are getting lowe" and lower, while more of it is being exj •(! each year to find a market elsewhere. Meanwhile the farmer is permitted to pay high prices for protected goods and to sell his wheat at prices fixed for him in Liverpool. If that sort of a system is what General Harrison wants to preserve, then he eertainly ought not to expect the farmers to give him their votes. That he does want to preserve the present high tariff on all'tho necessaries of life everybody knows. Therefore if he lias any newr or valuable ideas on the home-market question the farmers would like to have him make them public. The farmers are rapidly losing faith in the home-market theory so far as it concerns them.

It is pleasant for the manufacturers to have a home market which is completely at their mercy. They can now combine and sell their goods for anything they choose to ask. But combination with the farmers is out of the question. They arc permitted by the high tariff to sell their crops for what they can get, and to purchase clothing, farm implements and other necessary artieleaSat prices fixed by trusts, combinations, and protected monopolies of avery sort. Gen. Harrison evidently thinks they ought to be satisfied with this infamous system which raises every man’s hand against them and leaves them powerless to strike back. Ho merely holds out to them the indefinite promise of a profitable home market, which has been their hope for years, and which is farther away to-day than it ever was before. Here, iu a nutshell, are the results of a high tariff: For the manufacturers, combinations and enormous profits; for farmers, creased expenses and annual losses.—(7/i* cago News.