Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1889 — VOORHEES’ SPEECH AT THETARIFF REFORM MEETING, [ARTICLE]

VOORHEES’ SPEECH AT THE — TARIFF REFORM MEETING,

Scottsburg, Ind, Sept. 21’1889. HOME MARKETS. The Fallacy of the “Home Market” Cry Exposed. How long has it been since eminent republican speakers were here in your midst, pointing out to th« farmer the glorious results which awaited him under a high protective tariff? You can almost hear their voices yet, left over, as it were, from the campaign of last year. They cry out for you to behold a glorious home market, built up by restricting trade with the world. Many heard and believed, some of whom are her.* to-day. Will you please to cast your eyes around now, in the good county of Scott, and all over Indiana, and all over the United States, and then tell me what you think of the home markets for the farmer at this time? What do you men who voted the republican ticket last fall, under the dying promises of amazing pros; enty, have to say of the outlook? f. artisan mendacity was reduced to an exact science in that campaign, and towered over ev« ry other means of success, except the corrupt use of money on “blocks of five,”jj as Pike’s Peak towers over the minor elevations of the

Rocky mountains. You were told, and you believed, that republican victory meant a ready demand in your home markets for all ,ou had to cell, and at full, liberal, remunerative prices, while a democratic victory meant hard times, the depression and overthrow of business, and low, scant prices for all the productions of your f ,xms. It would saem as if an overruling providence intended to rebukaand put a urrk of shame on the mendacious leaders of a great party by the prompt exposure and awful refutation which have so swiftly followed. With the highest protective tariff, not only in American history but at this time in the world, our home markets are worse for the American f&rmer than ever before known. With wheat at 70 cents a bushel, corn at 25, o its at 5, and the meat maiket for beef and pork, in all their staple forms, in ths same depressed, nrn-remu-nerative condition the stupendous lies of 1888 now come trooping back to plague, torment and choke their inventors, let us earnestly hope, for all time to come. The highest rates of tariff duties ever imposed in the United States to protect the home manufacturer will go into history accompanied by the most stagnant, unprofitable, low-priced home markets ever inflicted on the Amer can laborer and producer.

But let us at this point take another step, and inquire what connection a protective tariff has with home markets, and what influence it can have except for evil in obstructing the natural commerce of the world. Home markets for the American farmer are not created, assisted or stimulated by acts of congress on the subject of the tariff. Wq are the food-produc-ing nation of the world, and, after feeding ourselves, we assist largely in feeding the rest of mankind. Our vast surplus productions of grain, of meat, and also of cotton and other sources of wealth, have their selling prices fixed, both in Europe and at home, under the unrepeatable law of supply and demand in the markets of Liverpool and other great centers and distributing points of the world’s traffic. An act of congress makes a home market for the American manufacturer and compels you to buy in it at his own prices, by protecting him from legitimate competition, but the prices fir all you have to sell, not only at home but abroad, are fixed and regulated

in foreign markets, where absqlute free trade prevails, where competition, without restraint, exists, and where you come in selling rivalry with the pauper labor of every clime beneath the sun. The total value of exports from the United States in 18p8 was $695,h 954,639, and of this fentire amount nearly five hundred million dollars were made up of breadstuffs, beef and hog products, live cattle, and raw, unmanufactured cutton. All this surplvs of American agriculture went, not upon a home, but a foreign market; not upon a foreign market; not upon a market where high prices are sect red to the seller by protection, but upon a market where trade was free, open, and unrestricted. Ii is esti* mated that our wheat crop this year will reach five hundred miland that one hundred millions of these bushels will be sold abroad, where competition between the wheat crops of the

United States, and of Russia, and of the East Indies establish and govern the price of wheat for all the markets of the world. You sell everv bushel you can spate from your own use at this price, thus created and regulated. In other words, the price of wheat and other American provisions at Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago and New York is the Liverpool price, subject onty to such differences as are made bv.the expense of trpnsportation. lAn old and intelligent farmer, so a recent magazine article thfls truthfully and indignantly describes the situation on this point:

“Now, let us see,” he remarks, “how this system works as to the larmer. JLs market is a foreign one. All the surplus that is over the home demand goesto Europe, where our congress hr.s no juris* diction, and where the pneg i§ fixed not only for whkt is 'Will there, but for all that is sold at home. This is free trade. He is free to [trade. He is free to sell without tax or charge wherever he inds a demand. And in this mar* cet he comes in contact with the owest kind of pauper labor known :o the world. How is it when he comes to buy ? it is then prot?c tion. Every article of clothing, ?very material that goes to give urn a shelter, all that is necessary ;o carry on his vork, is inereased as to price twice or thrice its value. He then buys under protection and sells under free trade.”

It is hardly necessary to add ihat this venerable andiwell informed“farm er does not vote the repubican ticket, nor need it be said ;hat the organs of the robber barons wiU not be pleased with his views any more than they are with mine. Are you, however, any more enraptured than he is with home markets, in whiclk a protective tariff adds a hundred per cent, on all jou have to buy, and leaves you to the mercies of free trade and competition with pauper labor on all you have to sell? But suppose, in your desire, and in your natural right to buy, as well as to sell, to your own advantage, and not for the benefit of others, you seek foreign, cheap markets in which to puachase, what you want and need. Let us see how that will work. Suppose you have a thousand bushels of wheat to sell this fall, and you learn that it will bring you SI,OOO delivered at Liverpool. You also wish to pur - chase althousand yards, we will say, of cloth, which you ascertain* ed could be done in foreign mark* ets at $1 a yard, and of the quality that will suit you. It occurs to you to make an exchange of your agricultural product for the man ufactured product, -and you go abroad with your wheat for that purpose, and succeed in doing so, You start back, gratified with vour fair trade m a market where there is no act of tongress to rob you, but as you land on the shores of this mighty republic, where peo, le are called free and equal, but are not, a government custom-house official confronts you with a demand for 50 per cent duty on that doth before you can bring it for

use or for sale to Indiana, or to any other state. ; You pay the duty; you have no choicj; or let us say the cloth is cut in two in the middie, and you get home with five hundred yardstef -doth, worth fi. e hundred dollai|, in exchange for a thoue|»d^ : bushelß of wheat, worth dollars. But suppoife you sell y ur wheat in this country for a thousand dollars, and seek >to purchase the cloth I have mentioned in our own markets. The result is the same. The cloth has been forced to pay the 50 per cent, tariff in order to

get here, and it has been added into the price, and again you are compelled io barter a thousand dollars’ wort of fbeat for five hundred dollars’ wWth or cloth, because you are taxed the other five hundred to protect the American manufacturer from honest competition. There is no escape for you as Ion? as you keep .a party in power which levies taxes by millions and hundreds of millions on the productions of your daily toil in order to protect, enrich and aggrandize another and a more favored class than you < selves.

But as the home market argu ments of the protectionists are scattered to the winds and vanish into thia air, other claims in behalf of restricted trade are put forward, equally fdbcious and untrue. — When the advocates of the protective policy find themselves bea' en down in tne arena of de» bate on the workings of every detail and of every specific feature of their complicated and indefensible syst-m, they turn, and with brazen effrontery point to the general development of +he country, the increased number of farms, the growth and progress of agricultural interests, and claim it is ail due to tariff legi lation, while in point of fact, such prosperity as the American farmer has been able to achieve has bee in spite of such legislation, and by the expenditure of almost superhuman energies to overcome it as a hind* rance, a depression and a curse. — I can easily und rstand how your fathers, settling in a new, unbroken country, nearly a hundred years ago, and getting a home from the government at $1.25 an acre, felt that fhey were growing rich when their land wont up to $lO, to S3O, to SSO, and perhaps to $75 an acre. But this was far more the result of immigration and the general settlement of the country, hitherto a wilderness, than the value of their crops, or of anv government policy of trade and commerce. How long has it b» en since your farm lands here grew any in value? during the last twenty-seven years a high protective tariff has held sway, and run riot, and dominated every thing in this country. Can you sell your lands for more than you could thirty years ago? On the contrary, the stubborn statistics show a large shrinkage in the average value of agricultural lands in all *he well-settled farming states, and especially so in the states of the Northwest Take the great states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Does their condition prove, that the tariff has fostered the farmer, fertilized his fields, and insured him fair returns for the contents of his gra*, naries? I will call Gov. Foraker as a witness in regard to Ohio. I believe it is generally conceded that he is the most rampant and inflammatory republican in ths Mississippi valley, sticking at nothing to sustain his cause, and yet, in his inaugural address as governor, in January, 1887, only a little more than two years and a half ago, m comparing the value of the real estate of that great commonwealth at the time he spoke with what it was in 1880, seven years before, he was forced to say:

Loose’s Red Clover Pile Remedy, is a positive specific for al forms of the disease. Blind, Bleed** ing,ltching, Ulcerated, and Protruding Piles. Price &oc. For sale by Long « Eger t

A Heavy Decline and the Causes Leading Thereto. “There has been a heavy decline. Farm property is from 25 to 50 per cent, cheaper today than it then was.” This is a very startling statement, coming from such a source, and I commend it to a wide reading at this time Ohio is no stranger to the tariff but has extensive interests for it to operate on. It would seem, however,that if anybody has been benefited there, farmers, on the contrary, have been sorely victimized and comparatively destroyed. But this is not all with the farmers of Ohio. Their rich and exceedingly productive lands have not only been diminishing in value, but they have been forced to mortgage them to an alarming extent. The official reports of that misled and usually wrong-voting state show that her real estate is under mortgages for many millions of dollars, the greater portion of which is owing to foreign loan associations for money borrowed with which to pay home debts, hold onto their farms and cultivate them You know what this means. No farmer can pay from 5 to 10 per cent, on borrowed money of any considerable am’t and for any considerable length of time, out of the proceeds of his farm. Sooner or later there will be a foreclosure and a sale, and the farm goes. It will be swollowed up and digested in the maw of tne money power—a maw as merciless, as insatiate and as unimpeasable as the maw of death itself. Turn to the state of Micnigan. Within the last twelve months the Hon. Wm.L. Wilson, a member of congress from the Harper's Ferry district of West Virginia, and a gentleman of ability, learning and eloquence, made the following statement on the floor of the house m regard to the condition of that state. “I do not wish to make any statement that is not sustained bj the facts, and so I have obtained the last report of ths labor bureau of the state of Michigan, which covers an in-vestig-ition into the mortgages on Michigan farms,Band which iresents some striking figures :: stand here to-day to say that I have not, the. slightest doubt ;hat the Michigan farmer is as in lustrious, as hardworking as intelligent as the farmer in any other section of the country, and yet this official volume shows that 47 per cent of the farm lands of Michigan are covered by mortgages, and that the mortgages are 46 per cent, of the assessed valuation of the farms mortgaged Compare the condition of the unprotected Michigan farmer with the condition of the protected owner of copper mines in Michigan, the latter piling up dividend upon dividend, million upon million, out of the privilege granted him by congress to tax the people of this country, while ine farmer is working early and delving late and piling up mortgage after mortgage upon his estate The farmers have neither the time nor the money to come here and besiege congress about these matters. They are chained to their plows, to their daily labor. They cannot come here to look after their own interests, but |the owners of copper mines and other industries that are protected and subsidized are here at all times in your lobbies, urging measures for their own benefit.” # < This appalling disclosure was made in the presence of the delegates in congress from Michigan, and met with not a word of denial. How iong a people, born free, and with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, will submit to mortgage o ue-half their farm lands, for Tactically their full value, in I it 1 ■■l r SjiWa* ' ■

order to pay taxes to manufacturer of from 35 to over 160 per cent, on all they are compelled to purchase and con sume in their daily lives, is a problem I remit to the near and swift-approaching future. This side of the serfs oi Russia, of the down trodden and plundered tenantry of Ireland there is no other such enslave ment of the tillers of the soil on the face of the civilized globe as exists in these United States. I might point to our adjoining sister state, Illinois, that empire of agricultural and commercial wealth, and dwell upon the condition of her farmers and farm lands. We would there behold the same mountain range s of mortgage indebtedness, reaching from Cook county to Cairo, and from the Wabash to the Mississippi, covering more than one half of the abodes of her inhabitants. I have the official report from her labor bureau for 1888, Its details are an overwhelming proof of the fatal tendencies of the times. In our own state, the splendid state of Indiana, I appeal to the records of every county within her borders. Uiey disclose a more cruel oppies sion of debt upon the farming intersts, and more mortgaged securities to foreign loan associations, than ever existed in our history before. Indeed, the condition of all the west - ern states at this time is sub sta'itially the same. They stand as a perpetual and enduring refutation of tne stupendous falsehood that the farmer is protected, encouraged, and assisted by our wretched system of tariff leg islation.

“11l farce the land to hastening Ulb a prey, Where we Ith accumulates and farms decay ”