Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1889 — Page 5 Advertisements Column 3 [ADVERTISEMENT]

In our last issue we quoted Joseph MediM’s tariff speech before a farmer convention It is good Democratic doctcine. Here is some. moie of it. Read: “In a country like ours where money is abundant and for loan bv hundreds of milLons where it goes begg ng for i or 5 per cent, on go<xl securitie ; where there is as much surplus wealth as in any nation m tlu world except England, and very nearly as much as in England; where men cannot find investment for their capital, it is not necessary to our ‘infant industries’ anv longer to live on spoon victuals. They hive been coddled enough at the cost of the farmers. They are “stalwarts” now, and if they can’t stand let them sit} down or go into some other bus.ness.

The farmers sell their products on free trade principles throughout the world, without protection. The tariff put down to their credit is straw, ch^ff —it is worthless to you; because whenever you raise a surplus of any product and seek a foreign ma ket for it the price at which you sell that surplus determines} the entire price you re ce-ive for the whole crop. The farmers buy goods at high protected prices and sell foou at free trade prices. Is that fair trade? * * *

I know of nothing agricultural where the pro ection is of appreciable value to farmers, except on wool, and most <,of the supposed gain on that is delusion. In the first place, not more than half a million of the five million of farmers iu the United States keep sheep on their land, aud not one in ten of those make sheep raising their principal business. The woolen clothes of the 25,000,000 of agricultural population in this country costs them nearly double price by reason of the enormous duties levied on imported woolen goods of all kinds, and the chief excuse for imposing and ;etaining these immense duties offered by the manufacturers is the tax on wool which they are obliged to pay. If that tax were repeaie i they admit thett the tariff on woolen clothing might be largely reduced. Now, you see, that nine-tenths of the farmers keep no sheep, and therefore derive no benefit whatever from the duties on the different grades of wool, and nine-tenths of the remainder keep sc few sheep and have so little wool to sell that the extra price they receive for it only rep.ys tiiem a part *f what they lose in the excessive cost of their clotting by reason of the high tariff on woolen goods, for it is a fact that the manufacturer adds the amount on the tariff to the price of his woolens, and ths- - charges his profit on the tariff tax as well as on the original price of the article. Hence it is that a 50 or 60 p?.r cent duty actually doubles the price of goods to the consumers.

“The domestic wool-clip of 1881 was about 280,000,000 of pounds. The duty on imported wool averages 10 cents per pound. It would be a great saving to the people of the United States if the wool-growers were paid this 10 cents per peund as a bounty directly out of the national treasury, and admit wool free, and cut the tariff down one-half on woolen goods. The less would be 28,000, 000 on bounty to the sheep raisers, but the gain to the public in cheaper clothtng would be ten times that sum. Assessing the increased cost of woolen clothing to the people on account of the duties on wool and c otli *»t the low ertimate of sßp *r inh bitant, it amountr to $16,000,000 a year on the 20,000,000 of agricultural population who raise no sheep—a sum cotsiderablv larger than what was received for the entire wool-clip, Thus you see the humbug and iraud of the cry that farmers are protected by the high tariff which in fact enables manufacturers to lieece them closer than they shear their own sheep. And wool is the only farmers’ product that r ceives any benefit whatever from our ultra tariff on consumers. It is an insuit to common sense to affirm that the tariff enhances the pi ice of wheat, corn, oats, cattle, hogs, horses or mules, poultry, butter, cheese, milk, hay, fruit, vegetables, cotton, or tobacco leaf. The price of the farmers’ produt ts is fix d by the foreign markets, and the price of nearly everything the farmer buys is determined by the tariff and its incidents. This is an ugly truth, but it cannot be rubbed out.” Lafayette Journal,