Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1890 — WAR ON THE FARMER. [ARTICLE]

WAR ON THE FARMER.

He Is Plundered and the Foreigner Protected. Compelled to Pay Double Prices for Agricultural Implements - A Sermon that Needs no Words to Point out the Moral. The American Mail and Expor* J ournal publishes several editions' One is tor circulation in this conn" try; the others for circulation abroad. The foreign edition con-' tains a “foreign price-list,” to which the foreign reader of the advertisements is referred. This “foreign price-list” is kept sacredly from all Ameri.an eyes. Not a copy can be had in this coui try at any price. A fter waiting three months and exhausting every means at its corny mand, the Tariff Reform club, of New York, sent to fciouth America for a cotiy and obtained, through the courtesy of a Spanish firm, the “Spanish Supplement” for April. It is headed in large type, “Illustrated Current Price-List of American Productions and Manufacturer for Exportation.” An examination of this Spanish “Precio Corrient” shows that the line of goods offered is of the same general nature as that in the export edition of the Engineering and Mining Jonrn 1, except that it represents a much wider range ot protected milled goods, and the discounts offered are from 10 to 15 per cent better. “The prices quoted,” it says, “are those that rule on the day of its publication and are subject to the fluctuations of the market.” - The supplement contains fortyeight wide columns. The New York World had the illustrated portion of the advertisements photographed down tq, a suitable size for its own columns and published it much to the dissatisfaction of the manufacturers. They protested but their protests avail noth iag. a It will pay every American fjr-

mar to study the exposure made by the \\ orld concerning these advertisements intended for circulation in Spanish America only. There is not a farmer in the United States who does not know what he has to pay for these inK piemen ts; but that every other reader may know the price charged lure in the United States those prices are reproduced in parallel columns for inspection and comparison. Spanish American T*rice. Price. Vdvanee plough...! 9,00 SIB,OO Advance plough... 4,00 8,00 Hay tedder 30,00 45,00 Mower 40,00 05,00 Horse-i ake 17,00 25,00 Gumming feed-cut-ter No. 3 ...60,00 90,00 Ann Arbor cutter No. 2 28,00 40,00 Ann Arbor cutter No. 1 16,00 28,00 Clipper cutter 9,60 18,00 Lever cutter 4,25 8,00 Cultivator 22,00 30,00 Sweep 60,00 90,00 There are in this Spanish sup-' clement adverti ements representing the manufactured products of 166 protected firms and the same number of protected industries. Practically, an advertisement of one protected firm is an advertises ment of all firms engaged in the same trade and competing one with another, for no one fbm will reiuso to give as good discounts as another, and these advertisements represent several thousand pro.. ;ected manufacturers. The World pursues this subject editorially as follows: “That the protected mills and actom sell abroad to foreigners cheaper than they will sell at home io Americans has been known for ; rears. One of the chief sins sieged by the rabid protectionists Against the Cleveland admL istra ion was that it had destroyed the Republican sugar trust’s control of the English market by forcing it to charge the Englishman four and a half cents per pound for the same sugar it charged the Ameri can eight oents per pound for. Every Republican newspaper las at time or another admit ied and found an excuse for the mere abstract fact, and whee it remained a question of theory very few persons took even a lan guid interest in it. What was every body's business in general was nobody’s business in particu lar.

The first slight ripple of public sentiment followed the unwise da nunciation by the American Econ omist—organ of the Protective Ta iff League—of Secretary Fair child’s decrease of the drawback on exported refined sugar from to cents per pound, for the American Economist blunderingly published tables showing that the Republican sugar trust undersold in foreign markets the foreign re finers, although nne tenths of the duty on raw material was refunded. This was a concrete illustration of how 3$ cents protection on the re fined product was given this ind ustry only that it might charge Americans more than foreigners. Every voter could understand it, it appealed instantly to his pocket. Why should the tariff compel him to pay a Republican refiner 8 cents when that Republican refiner co’d make a profit selling to the Eng lishmen at 44 if he had a draw) back of 2§ on his*raw material?” The ripple has become a tidal wave thiough the World’s proof that every protected industry in the United States is doing the same thing—selling cheaper abro’d than at home; competing with for eignors in its own market. When the World photographed and printed the foreign advertise meats of these protected American manufactures, showing exactly the prices charged the foreign consn mer, every man who read them saw that he himself had to pay the Srotection piper, and he could sit own and figure what the amount was on a hundred or more manu facturesof iron.

There was nothing to prove; no| thing to doubt. The World said nothing. It merely reprinted, with out charge, the advertisements of these American manufactures cir culatedin foreign countries. The foreign prices were given in the foreign advertisements, and the latter were photographed. The only qu.-etion that might tie raised is the genuineness of the advertisements. This cannot be done with those heretofore publshed, because World has made provision to supply every doubter with the export edition of the Engineering and Mining J ournal in whieh they appear* It may be raised—the advocates of protection are desperate enough to do anything and say anything — on the carefully guard* d Spanish edition of the American Mail and Ex ort Journal, because no copies of it can be procured in this country; out such a policy would be suicidal. The publ shers can be compelled to produce ttieii files in court—if copies can be seen in no other way. There are too many honest men in the Republican party, and the proof is too overwhelming, for denial to succeed. No man with common sense, whatever his politics, can doubt the genuineness of these advertisements. And no man with common sense wants one word added to what they tell him of the object of protection.” If the G. A. R. will only employ a clerk at every post to prepare applications for pensions under the the new law, it will accomolish two objects—save the “old soldiers” enormous fees, and refute the charge that the organization is controlled by claim agents.

We are all right and I believejwe will have a majority of forty or sixty in the next house. The democratic party has much to expect in the way of support this year from the workingmen of the country. Our working people are, on the whole, intelligent, and they have learned a good deal since the election two years ago. They know now that the Republican party is a party of corporation and monopoly thieves, owned and controlled by a half dozen corporation managers. The working people have >nothing to expect from Their only show for relief from their present overtaxed condition is to act with the democrats, and that is what they are going to do.-Roger Q. Mills.

“1 Bee gentlemen rising on that (Republcan) side of the house, one contending for a high duty on lead, another for a low duty on lead, each one of them declaring that his particular industry will be ruined unless his theory is carried out. *On the other hand, one wants a high duty on glass and another a low duty: and so on throughout the whole of the schedules. *ltis not ajquestion as to whether the government needs the rev e me or not;git is not a ques- • ion as to whether we are lew inar duties for the purpose of raising revenues to go into the treasury; it is not a questior whelher we are levying dutiey for the purpose of raising rev enue to go into the treasury; it is not a question whether the majority of the American people are to be benefitted by this bill; but it is scramble, a trade and a bargain on the part of gentlemen on that side of the house to see who can get the most of the steal in this bill. It is a mere bargain and sale; a trade, a scramble, a grab game; and it seems that those who have got their maw into it are standing Watch so as to «owd all the rest out. The wnble thing is a steal and a robbery of the freat American people.”— ames G. Blaine. C. M. Comparet of Fort Wayne called in to see us the§other day He was here in the interest of Henry 0. Bergboff, a prominent Democratic candidate for nomination for state treasurer,