Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1890 — Decline of Farming. [ARTICLE]

Decline of Farming.

The farming interest is the great foundation interest of our country, and though it is that on which we most depend,” and which of all others ought to have “protection," it ip that which is being gradually taxed to death by our “tariff,” not for the sake of raising the necessary expense of the government, but to put money into the pockets of engaged in other interests and to roll up immense sums in the national treasury which are but a temptation to politicians and which lead to a thousand needless, if not injurious, expenditures. Durihg the ten years from 1850 to 1860 the increase of value of onr farms was $3,373,000,000. or over 10 per cent, yearly; while for the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 it was only $3,374,000,000, or about per cent, yearly. In New England, farming, as a bnsiuees, is well nigh a thing of the past; and even in Pennsylvania—Lancaster County, whioh used to beicalled the “Garden of the State"— farming does not pay, and farms are selling for less than half what they did thirty years ago. Illinois was formerly one of the profitable farming States; but only last month, when at the aunual meeting of the Swedish Lutheran Church, at Rockfo d, a resolution was proposed thanking God for the general prosperity of the last year, it was defeated by the farmer delegates, who denied that there had been any prosperity to the farming interests of the State. Prosperity there is in the couniry—prosperity to manufacturers, and mining, and railroads, and capitalists, but the crease of wealth is at the expense of the farming interests, which, under our tariffs, are taxed 40, 50 and 60 per cent, on the very articles needful for their families, or for conducting the business of farming, while many of the large moneyed interests of the land are taxed only some 10 or 12 per cent., thus widening the space between labor and capital, making the rich richer, and the poor poorer, Rnd so gradually undermining the very foundation of our permanent prosperity as a nation. If the farmers do not wake up to these facts and make themselves felt by their votes—if they do not sustain that*party, whichever it may be, that will modify these tariff exactions, and equalize the taxes that are now so burdensome to themselves, they will suffer for their indifference to their own interests and can hardly expect the sympathy of those who would gladly rejoice in their prosperity. —Detroit Free Prees.