Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — SPRINGER TO FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

SPRINGER TO FARMERS.

HE TELLS WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THE FARMERS. Tho Great Depression that He Found In New York State and His Explanation of It—Why the Home Market Fails to Make the Farmer Prosperous. I have been talking to the farmers this week in regard to the eftect that the tariff has upon them, and I will endeavor to point out some things which came under my observation. I found they were very attentive to their business, *nd I have been greatly surprised to find so much agricultural depression in the rural districts. The values of the farms have depreciated within the last five, ten, or fifteen years one-half on the average, sometimes much more. Numerous instances were pointed out to me showing that farms sold under mortgage brought only one-third and even one-fourth of their value some years ago. Farms are heavily mortgaged as a rule, and I was Informed by a gentleman in Broome County, N. Y., that of the farm mortgages foreclosed there were not five per cent, of them that sold for enough to pay the debt, in other words, the mortgagee had to take the farm for less than the amount of the mortgage. It is very important that the farmers should understand the cause of this depression. The leading Republicans are trying to discover some plausible reason ■outside of the effect of the protective tariff. Senator Warner Miller said a few days ago in a speech at Oswego that overproduction was the cause of agricultural depression. Nothing could be further from the truth or more absurd, and ■every farmer knows that there is no •overproduction of his product. The reason is simply this: The farmers of the United States can produce more of the products of the farms than can be ■consumed in this country. The surplus must be sold abroad. The price at which the sufplus is sold abroad fixes the price of the home product. When a farmer sells his products, whether he sells to his next•door neighbor, to the elevator man, to the commission merchant, or whether he ■ships it to New York, he sells at the price fixed in New York, less the cost of ■carrying it there and commission, and the New York market is fixed by the Liverpool market, which is the cheapest free trade market in the world. There the products of the farmers of this country come in direct competition with the products of Russia, Germany, France, Italy, India, and all the countries of the ■world, and in competition with all the pauper labor of the world. How is it when he comes to buy what he needs to support his family and keep his farm going? Ha must buy in this home market, this protective market, the dearest market in the world. If he should take his goods abroad in person, and should sell them in England, or France, or Germany and invest the proceeds in such articles as he needs on his farm and in his household affairs, when he reached New York ho would be required to pay, on an average, SSO tariff on every SIOO worth of goods he bought abroad. This, then,, reduces the purchasing power of the products of his farm one-half.

It he does not buy abroad and approaches the American manufacturer of goods, the manufacture of which is protected by a tariff, he finds this American manufacturer charging him tho foreign price with the tariff added. So that in every event, whether he uses the home product or the foreign product, in buying them he finds the purchasing power of his own products only one-half what it would otherwise be were it not for the tariff. Now this process will not destroy in a night—4t does not come Upon the farmer like a cyclone, and wipe him out of existence in a few minutes; but it is like the dropping of water upon a stone—it is gradually wearing him out all the time. Notwithstanding tho great fertility of his land, tho application of improved machinery and the use of fertilizers, notwithstanding his extraordinary industry and frugality, every day he is confronted with the inexorable fact that the products which he has to sell are lessened one-half in purchasing power by reason of tho tariff. This gradual depletion has had its inevitable effect. After twenty-five years of protective tariff, maintained principally by the votes of farmers, he finds that his situation is getting more desperate, his toil less remunerative, his farm depreciating continually in value, his indebtedness becoming greater. What consolation is it to him to reflect that a few favored individuals have become millionaires? Some of them have accumulated fortunes of twenty, thirty, forty and fifty million dollars in one lifetime. None of this is for him; ho is getting poorer every year. If protection insures the prosperity of tho farmer, why is it that agriculture is languishing and groaning under the burden of tariff taxes? Surely the tariff is nothing to tho benefit of the farmers of tho country. Why should they, therefore, cling to the delusion longer? Why should they support the party that maintains this robbery., that fosters these great monopolies and trusts, that makes millionaires of the few and paupers of the toiling millions? What farmers need in this country is to be permitted to purchase in the same market in which they are compelled to sell. When this privilege is accorded them, and the purchasing power of their produce is increased fifty per cent., they will begin to emerge from the depression which is now bearing so heavily upon them. If they will turn at once from the error of their ways something may be saved from tbo wreck of their fortunes, but if they persist in their partisan blindness, if they continue to vote for the G. O. P., which keeps up.this spoliation of agriculture, they must prepare for the inevitable result. Their farms will soon into the hands of capitalists and be consolidated into great baronial estates; private parks and huntinggrounds will be constructed; and the present occupants, gathering up the debris which they may find scattered about, must seek new homes in the far West, or move to tho cities and seek employment in factories, or roam the streets. The alternative is inevitable. Will they choose this fall between a policy which oppresses them and one which will deliver them? William M. Springer. Th® Boom in New York.c It is reported that there is a great boom in the dry goods trade in Now York. Many of tho most prominent firms unite tn saying that there has not been such an outlook for the immediate future in years. Do they explain this as being caused by the prospective passage of the McKinley tariff bill? No, indeed! Out

of k .*rge number of leading, merchants that have been talked withon the subject only one was found who -would venture the opinion that the prospect of McKinley’s towering duties was the cause of this boom. Most of these merchants, indeed, agree that it ie caused by the fact that the expectation of McKinley’s high duties caused merchants to buy enormous quantities of wools in Europe and to hurry them into the country before the McKinley bill was passed, in order to avoid paying those increased duties. In this way immense quantities of goods have been thrown upon the market, and hence the boom. Everybody wants to stock up well with goods before McKinley lays his chilling hands on trade. The same view is confirmed by a market report from Chicago, which says: “Until recently jobbers appeared to feel confident that the McKinkly tariff bill would either be defeated in the Senate or shelved until December. They now think the bill will become a law ere the close of the present Congress. They have taken advantage of the condition of the market caused by the enormous importations, and made heavy purchases of all descriptions of foreign goods, including large lines for the spring trade. Ordinarily such purchases would not have been made until the close of the year, but the opportunity to save 35 to 40 per cent, by immediate purchases was too great to be neglected. ” All this shows that no man likes tariff taxes when he has to pay them; that everybody wants to pay as little of them as possible; also, that the man who buys under the lower tariff is sure that he can undersell the man who buys under the higher tariff, for the tariff is a tax, talk as you will.