Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1890 — TRYING TO FOOL THE FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

TRYING TO FOOL THE FARMERS.

A Republican Paper’s Arraignment of the McKinley Abortion. [From the Philadelphia Telegraph (Rep.).] Of all the silly things Mr. McKinley has yet done iu connection with the tariff question his report to the House iu favor of the Ways and Means Committee bill is Ihe most grotesque. What possible sense is there in trying to fool the farmers of the United States by the statement that their industry is being prostrated on account of the crowding of American markets with foreign agricultural products? In order to hack up this utterly absurd declaration Mr. McKinley is driven to quote the importations of sugar, ten, coffee, fruits, tobacco, animals, and fibers—the latter including wool, hemp, jute, etp. Whit does the sugar industry in niue-tenths of the United States amount to? It is practically unknown in thirty-six of the forty-two Stites. How much tea and coffee are raised in this country? The importation of animals, as everybody knows, is chiefly confined to first-class breeding stock, brought in by fancy farmers. The car pet men have clearly shown that the class of wool most needed in this country is not and cannot be grown here profiiably. The fact of the matter is—and no m m knows the truth more cle rly thin Mr. McKinley himkelf—that when he puts our total agricultural imports at nearly $350,000,000 he is guilty of the most idiotio deception. This htatement is made for the purpose of carrying with it a false impiesaion. Until Mr. MoKinley’s report appeared the friends of the so-called '"Farmers’ Tariff” bill were quite content in speaking of agricultural imports coming into competition with Am<mcm productions in placing the amount iu the neighborhood of $75,000,000. This, too, is an outside figure, and is at least very largely the result of trade with Canada. When this argument was quickly met and demolished, in these columns and elsewhere, Air. McKinley and his iriends shifted their ground and made a bold advance that must make them ridiculous iu the sight of intelligent men everywhere. It being clearly shown that this $75,000,000, even if the farmers got the full benefit of it, would be more than swallowed up under this tariff bill in the incre >sed cost of clothing and the other necessaries of life, it became necessary to swell the figures and pull the wool, if possible, still further over the eyes of the doubting agriculturists. Mr. McKinley’s report in this uspect will prove a boomerang of the most destructive sort. It doesn’t pay to indulge in this kind of dece tion at any time. The bill is now before the House and before the country, nnl it must stand or fall upon its merits.