Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1891 — Page 3

TWO VIEWS ON CROPS.

-SECRETARY RUSK AND STATISTICIAN DODGE. ■Sangrains Uncle Jerry Congratulates the Country—He Thinks Protection Ha* dispelled the Agricultural C oud —Statistician Dodge Keports Poor Crops. In his second annual report Secretary Jlusk congratulates the President “and the country at large upon the generally improved outlook in agricultural matters. ” He calls attention to agricultural "depression in 1889 whe'n the present administration went into power. But when lie looks at the condition of agriculture, Uncle Jerry imagines that he sees a vast improvement He says: “The cloud which seemed to rest .gloomily upon American agriculture has been lightened, while the wise, economic legislation already secured holds out still brighter promise for the future. ” Uncle Jerry seems honestly to fancy that the “tin-whistle duties, ” as Butterworth called them, on wheat, corn, barley, eggs, etcare really going to improve the condition of the He gives tables to show the increase in price of a number of agricultural products, which increase the old gentleman imagines to be the result largely of the higher duties on these articles. JJut how the McKinley duty—or any ■dutjr, for that matter—on corn can raise the price of corn he does not undertake to show. As we imported only 1,626 bushels of corn for the fiscal year 1890, Against 101,000,000 exported, it would tax the sanguine genius of even Uncle Jerry to show how the corn duty has helped our farmers or can help them. About the same time the Secretary’s jrepqrt was issued another publication wa3 sent-forth from the . Department of Agriculture. This was the statistician’s ■“report on the yield of crops per aqre.” On the very first page of this report it is stated that the yield of corn per acre for the current year is the lowest ever reported, except the year 1881. The report also’ states that the yield per acre in 1889 was nearly one-half larger. Secretary Busk is gratified at the improved -outlook for agriculture, but our farmers will hesitate to accept his rosy anticipation, aa they know very well that the higjier prices of the present time are •capped short crops. No sensible farnfer fs willing to have higher prices at the expense of poor crops; he prefers rather large crops at low prices. The larger part of the corn grown by our farmers js consumed on the farm as food sor 1 man and beast. So far as this part of the corn crop is concerned, high prices avail nothing, and low production is •disastrous. It is stated that many farmers in clitinois are actually buying.corn at existing high prices to feed to their stock, St) low was their yield. Returning to the statistician’s report, he saiys that the corn shortage this year is principally “in the corn-surplus Statfe)’ That shortage is explained in •detail in several pages of the report. Some of the causes of the failure of the •crop. aj;e as follows: “Worms,” “hot winds,” “haii-storms in August,” “midsummer drought,” “excessive rains,” “frosts,” and “all possible drawbacks.” The farmers usually look upon all these things as evils to be deplored. The report on the yield of potatoes is ■of a similar nature. The average yield is stated to be the lowest, with two exceptions, ever reported. The acreage was smaller than usual, and this fact, together with the failure of the crop, makes the supply per capita smaller than in any recent year. ” The statistician thinks that these facts “amply warrant the advance in prices now ruling in all markets.” When our own ■crop is short there is usually a considerable importation of potatoes; but the statistician is of the opinion that the recent increase in the duty to 25 cents a bushel may check the large importation which our own scarcity would seem to make necessary. In other words, when our farniers have hardly any potatoes to sell, the duty comes into play to add greatly to the cost of the potatoes consumed by the poor in cities; but when our crop is abundant we supply our own market, and the duty then cannot possibly benefit our farmers. On the other hand, ipany of our farmers will be compelled to buy seed potatoes next spring with the McKinley duty added. Fruit is an important product of many of our farmers. The statistician reports that “th 6 season has been the worst for fruit that tne department has ever reported. ” McKinley raised the duties on -all kinds of fruit, but it is difficut to see how this will affect our farmers, except to increase the prices of the few lemons And oranges, nuts, raisins and prunes which they buy for their children. The only crop that the statistician reports very favorably on is sugar, saying, “the crop will be a large one.” But what do the farmers in general think of the McKinley bounty of 2 cents a pound -on sugar. The larger the crop of sugar the greater the sum taken out of the treasury to pay the sugar growers for doing their own work. The prospect is thatj with the introduction of the sugar beet, our sugar production will increase -enormously in the next fifteen years, nnd In proportion as this sugar bounty grows in volume so much the more clearly will all other farmers be convinced of the injustice of the whole bounty system. Why should the grower of sugar have a bounty while the growers of wheat and corn and cotton are neglected? Is the grower of sugar a public benefactor in any higher sense than is the grower of other farm products? The fact is that the high tariff.makers •are so accustomed to treating the farmer as the common burden-bearer of the entire country that when they do make a show of giving him some of the “benefits of protection” it is half humbug and pretense and half undisguised paternalism, for which there is no warrant in ■the Constitution.

Wages and Land.

in the United States' "there are 32.7 -acres per head of the entire population 1 , while in England, Germany, France. Italy, Ho Hand and Belgium, the average is*only 2.3 acres for each person. In EurbpW the number of people is so great that competition for employment is neq•essarily very sharp, and this reduces wages to the lowest possible figure. That ds why there is a great stream of European laborers coming to our shores every year. Here there is more room, and a man can set up on a farm rather than work in at starvation wagest Fdf this" reason the competition in the labor market is less severe with us thap in Europe, and wages have not yet beeii forced down to so low a figure as the European level. _ • It is mainly on account of our 32. p -acres for each person that we have •higher wages than Europe. Protection

has nothing to do with the general average of wages with us. It is well known that the general average of wages in our protected industries is lower thau in the non-protected industries.

TARIFF LETTERS TO FARMER BROWN.

NO. 11. Can Protection Increase Wealth? Dear Farmer Brown: You and I are familiar with the claim of the protectionists that protection increases the country’s wealth. We look into their papers and we find reports of the vast increase of production in various industries. One will give us tables showing the growth of iron production—in 1885 we produced 4,044,000 tons of pig iron* in 1890 probably 9,000.000 tons. (lUiers will run through the yearly repoTCs of steel rail production, nail-making, barbed wiremaking, plate and window glass, woolen and cotton goods industries—and everywhere they are able to point to growth, a growth which they claim in ail cases as the result of protection. In every case this claim rests upon that error in reasoning which is usually expressed in the Latin words, post hoc , ergo propter hoc (coming after this, therefore caused by this). The protectionist coolly assumes that since the country prospers under protection, therefore protection is the cause of such prosperity. If you should raise a good crop notwithstanding the drouth, you would not be so simple as to say that the drouth caused your good crop. On the contrary, you are sure you would nave had a still better crop if rain had come as you needed it. Imagine a steamboat beating its way down from Chicago to the northerp end of Lake Michigan in the face of a fierce wind. The vessel certainly makes speed,

Uncle Sam and Columbia—Wonder how Jong ’twill be before they are all smashed?— Chicago Times.

but if a certain passengef should claim that the speed was caffsed by this north wind, he would be laughed at as a fool, every intelligent passenger knowing that the vessel was only retarded in its course by the wind. If the passenger should point to the receding fields and groves on the shore to prove that the vessel was going forward, and should still insist the progress was due to the north wind, the passengers would think either that he was crazy, or else that he was some belated Rip Van Winkle who fell as eep in the last century, before the day of steam, and who cannot now take account of anything else than the wind as a propelling force for ships. In the same way the country goes forward, not by reason of protection, but despite protection. As the vessel has within it a force which is able to overcome the external hinderance of wind., so Jhe country has in it native forces of brain and muscle, inventive genius and skill of hand. Nature’s rich resources and man’s courage and industry, which are able to force the industrial ship of state forward in its course, notwithstanding the contrary wind of protection. When the protectionists try to establish their claim that protection enriches "the country, they always examine the matter from the standpoint of the producer, the consumer being rarely taken account of. If they can show, as they doubtless can in many* instances, that the profits of an industry are caused by the protective duty, they at once conclude that protection is a wealth-pro-ducing factor in the nation’s life. Some of them, however, do take account of the consumer, if only to show tbalHElthough protection may make him pay more for his goods, still the money he pays for them remains in the ojuntry, and therefore the country is none thi poorer for his loss. But the true standpoint from which to estimate the cost of a given product to the country is the standpoint of the consumer. The total cost to ail consumers is the measure of cost to the country. If the product in question is put down to the consumers of *t at a higher price by

the domestic manufacturer than It would be If that product was imported, is ttnot clear that we are Buyiug at borne at a loss, and that Joss precisely equal to the difference of price between the domestic article and the simillar foreign article? For why do we labor? Is it for the sake of toil itself? Do we not rather labor for the sake of the things which labor produces, for what we call goqds? But if goods can be had with less labor by an exchange with a foreign people do we not impose unnecessary labor upon ourselves when we undertake to make those goods ourselves? Where a people are Cj let alone by the tarifftnaker they naturally take to those employments which pay best, or, in other words, in which their labor is most productive. If-however, the tariff maker comes aldng and decides that people must produce goods which they have not yet undertaken to produce, is it not clear that must be taken away from profitable empldyment and put to doing what is relatively less profitable? We do not make tin plates. Why not? Because our people find that they can make more money by doing other things. The present high McKinley duty on tin plates will doubtless cause some of our people to undertake the manufacture of them, and it may be done, too, at a profit, but this profit will be possible i ■ only by reason of the higher price caused by the duty of 2 2-10 cents a pound. The makers of tin plates may grow rich, they may give employment to- several thousand laborers, and protectionists will then point to the wealthy c&pltalists in this business, and to the homes of the laborers engaged in it, and tell us that this is an example of wealth created by protection. But I deny beforehand that it wil be anything of the kind —deny it emphatically. The effect pointed to will

BENNY, THE JUGGLES.

be only a new distribution of old wealth. A few cents will be collected from each household which uses tinware, from each housewife who buys canned fruits and vegetables, a few dollars from each man who puts a tin roof on his house, and all these small contributions will flow together and reappear in the form of tinplate mills and houses for tin-plate makers. Wealth has not been created; it has been scattered, and has been gathered up again by others. When the creek washes away your pumpkins your labor is lost, and you have no pumpkins; it is very little comfort to you to be told that your pumpkins lodged ten miles down tlje creek and that a brother farmer’s pigs are five pounds fatter than they were before the freshet. .. 4 Let me call your attention to an actual case. The plate-glass industry of this country, consisting of nine or ten factories, is said to produce 25,060,000 feet of glass every year. Some years ago the price of plate glass was $1.50 per square foot; but it averages now somewhat above 75 cents a foot. Both the industry itself and the reduction of the price are claimed by the protectionists as bright and shining examples to prove the wisdom of the present high tariff system. But let us figure on the problem a little. Our home market plate glass, 25,000,000 feet at 75 cents a foot, costs our people $18,750,000. The duty on plate glass is almost prohibitory; but the small quantity which came in in 1889 was entered at the custom houses, according to the Treasury reports, at 32 4-10 cents. If we had bought our 25,000,000 feet of glass in Europe at this price the total cost would have been $8,100,000, or a saving to the consumers of $10,650,000 in a single year. Now this vast sum is a clean loss to the buyers of plate glass. Mr. Blaine says that “protection is a great distributor of wealth.” Of course it is. Here is distributed $10,650,000 in one year. But protection is also a collector of wealth; the principal p’ate glass concern in this country cleared last year 34% per cent on its capital. The mefct of the wbolA nueation lies tn

this case, and the question Is, Does ft pa> to spend ten million f year In order to have its nine or ten plate glass factories? Is not the country poorer by Just the amount ci $10,650,000 by reason of manufacturing its own plate glass? Would you conduct your business on such principles? Would you insist that it would be true economy to make your own farm wagon, costing you two weeks of labor, when you might buy one with one week of labor put upon your wheat fields? Would you think you had saved anything by having found a new way in which tp employ yourself? But this one case is enough; if J contains all the elements of the . question, “Can protection increase wealth?” What is true of plate glass will be found true of every other protected industry in which the duty is really protective. From one you can judge all. This is a typical case, and one of the greatest standbys of the protectionists. If plate glass is produced at a loss to the country, you may conclude that the whole system of protection is a dead weight upon our progress—not a producer but a destroyer of wealth. Youxs truly,

The Working Momen of New York.

The statement is made by Mr. fius, in a recently published work, that there are about 150,000 honest women in New York City who, by working fifteen hours or more a day, can earn barely 60 cents daily. This figure seems very loty, indeed, when it is remembered that the expense of living in a city like New York is much higher than In smaller towns and in country districts. Sixty cents a day in New York means hardly as much as 30 cents in any small country town. What renders the plight of these poor, hard-working women of New York still more pitiable is the fact that the money which they do earn is by the Mc-

Kinley tariff law made less effective in buying the necessaries of life than it was before. Duties have been wantonly in* creased on many articles of prime necessity to them, and they are even told that these McKinley duties are in the interests of the laboring people. This year the potato crop of this country is a partial failure, large supplies must be brought in from Canada at an extra McKinley tariff cost of 25 cents a bushel, add to poor women in the sad situation just described 25 cents on a single bushel of potatoes is no small matter. True, McKinley imposes this duty on potatoes Upon the pretense of helping our farmers; but it is an insult to our farmers to claim that they need a duty which lays such burdens upon the poor of the cities. * The most burdensome provision of the McKinley law upon these women, however, is the tax on all kinds of clothing and of cloth from which to make it What is still more cruel is the fact that the very heaviest duties are in nearly every case imposed on the cheapest grades of cloth, whether woolen, cotton, or linen. > What the women of the slums of New York, the hundred and fifty thousand who labor day and night to keep soul and body together on sixty cents a day, or in many cases on half that amount, would be likely to think of that policy of protection which, for the sake of “infant in4ustrfe#, a which are tn "lhanyjcases already the strongest in the world, keeps their wages down and the price of necessities of life up, is not perhaps of much matter. They are not educated in the consideration of great questions of economics, and if they were they have no time to think of anything. If they had, they might conclude that it was, on the whole, best to kill themseives. The question is, however, what do the men and women who are living in comfort think of it? Can they feel that so long as they aid in the support of the monstrosity called protection, that Frankenstein, which threatens the very life of the Republic, they are free of blood guiltiness concerning these poor creat-i ures working and suffering in the slams?

RICHARD KNOX.

ALL THE STATE NEWS

IS GIVEN BELOW IN THESE TWO ; COLUMNS. i Death Fr*!«ra'»le to Eviction—Burned to Daath—*A Watei melon Story—Accidental Shooting—Badly .Mangled—N*w Factory tor JrffentouviUe—A Goslion Gourmand. —Elwdod' talks of annexing Alexandria. —There are seventy-seven coal mines In Indiana. —Logansport’s supply of natural gas is all right. —Columbus is getting ready to manufacture ice. .—Union City will have incandescent light by Feb. 1. „ —Arthur Sturgeon was sandbaged and robbed at Logansport. —Levi Beal, near Shideler, lost his house and contents by tire. —Richmond Is working hard to secure a new Government Building. —Eighty head of Brown Countycattle have died lately of an unknown disease. —Frank Smith lost a leg at Noblesvillo by to board a moving train. , —They’ve got lots of sand In Michigan City; have shipped over 1,000,000 tons this year. —M. K. Donaldson was knocked down, beaten and robbed by footpads at Fort Wayne. —Jesse Austin, of Frankfort, a brakeman on the Cloverleaf road, was crushed to death by cars. —Morgan County Is to havo a workhouse.

—Marion citizens are pondering over measures to provent the squandering of their natural gas. —Rochester claims to be the “healthiest, neatest and most business-like little city in the State.” —Charlos Bauer, proprietor of the Torro Haute House, was seriously injured in a runaway. —A new Christian Church at Martz, was freed from debt and dedicated by Rev. L. L. Carpenter. —Oliver Worle, of Loreo, Miami County, was sandbagged and robbed of about $25 and his watch. —Otis Hughes, of English, while drunk, fell off a bridge seventy-live feet and was practically unhurt. —The Western Indiana Poultry Association will hold its annual poultry show in Lebanon, January 5 to 10. —The present electric-light company at Crawfordsvlllo will sell thoplant’td the city upon favorable terms. —David Adklnson attempted suicide with strychnine, at Marion, and may dip. Domestic trouble was the cause. —The City House and Holland Hotel wore destroyed by firo at Mllltown, Crawford County. Loss, $3,000. —Evansville Journal says several society ladies are on the grand jury’s list, there, for gambling. Do tell ! —Capt. Ed Howard, of Jeffersonville, is putting In a steel ship-building plant, which will employ 200 skilled men. —J. Brevort, an eccentric Columbus farmer, died recently and left his fortune of $7,000 to the Butler University. —Sullivan Connty Commissioners will work their jail prisoners on a stone pile, in a yard “enclosed with high fence. —Mrs. Dado Ballard’s Mooresvillo heirs are contesting her will. She left SIO,OOO in a shape they do not like. , —Jackson and Scott County farmers are losing tliolr horses from a disease similar to distemper, but moro fatal. —Watson Boslic’s country residence near Columbus, wws destroyed by fire. Family barely escaped with their lives. —George H. Hopkins, of Clay Township, Carroll County, swallowed arsenic for quinine and Is not expocted to live. —The Wabash Railroad Company hat paid to Mrs. Fetters $2,000. Her husband was killed while coupling cars.

—The first seal ever usod by the Kosciusko County was the reverse side of a silver ten-cent piece. —Mrs. Tresso, aged 80, was burned to death by the overturning of a lamp, at the home of her son, in Tippecanoe County. —A man at Crawfordsvillc, claims that he has a hen that lays two eggs per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. —lndiana has a larger amount of water that is inhabited by the better class of indigenous fish than any State in the Union. —A man was detected in Fort Wayne stealing a pair of shoes. In just fortyfive minutes after he was serving a sentence in jail. —Martin Baur, engineer in Lutz’s stave factory, at Wabash, was badly mangled by the breaking of the fiy-wheel of his engine. —William Sherwin, a prominent young merchant of Point Isabel, Grant County, was kicked by a vicious horse and fatally injured. —A company has been organized to boom Jonesboro, after the style of Elwood, having secured options on about 1,600 acres of land. —John Walton, Coatesvillo, has been indicted for forgery. He paid Mrs. Bynum’s taxes for her and ia accused of raising the receipts. —George Flemming, driving a breadwagon at Marion, was thrown under the heels of the horses by the breaking of the king-bolt. The frightened horses kicked him a number of times, injuring him, it is feared, beyoud recovery. —P. N. Applegate, reputable Alaska citizen, says he planted watermelon seed around an old straw stack May 10 last. On Aug. 15 he ate ripe melons, and has teeen eating them off these vines ever since. Will have enough to last him ’til 1891. :'

—Columbus Sheriff would not allow James Campbell, prisoner, to attend the funeral of his child. Campbell offered to go bound hand and foot. —A flat-car loadod with stone was overturned on the White River bridge, Spencer, Monday. Was. Gaskins, and Robert Boyd, were seriously injured. —During a fight in a saloon at Loogootee Nich O’Brien, a young man, was shot and killed instantly. The murderer is unknown and yet at large. —Farmer Thompson hitched his horse in* Vincennes close to the railroad. A train came along and scared the animal so badly it dropped dead. —A company, has been organized in Crawfordsvijle to manufacture pottery from the fine clay discovered on Hence Coleman’s farm, near tho city. —Mrs. Eliza Myers, 36, suicided in Seymour, by taking rough on rats. Had been abandoned by her husband and didn’t care to buffet along alone. —A laborer at the Bonney vise-works, at Marion, had an arm torn from the socket and otherwise seriously injured by being caught in tho machinery. —Timothy Hogan, Fort Branch, sued John Skipp for SIO,OOO, claiming he had skipped with his wife’s affoctions. Skipp paid him $3,000 and that settled it. —“Boo’’ Eubanks got a life sentence at Bedford for murdering his sister last November. His father was }iis accomplice, and will probably get a like sentence. —Hog cholera in the form of an epldomic; has struck Daviess County, and hundreds of porkers are dying. Farmers are much alarmed and fear to kill for meat.

—John Slberry has been convicted, in tho Bluffton Circuit Court, of killing his wife, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Slberry claimed that tho shooting was accidental. y~ —One hundred dollars of tfio $360 stolon from T. C. Courtnoy at Waynotown, last week, has boon found In his yard, where the thief had dropped it in leaving the houso. —Rev. Dr. Alman Virgil, a well-known Baptist minister, diod at Fort Wayne, aged 92 years. Death resulted from injuries received In a fall sovoral days before. He was widoly known. —E. H. Noyes, station agent for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Coburg, was struck by a passenger train and killed. Ho was well known, and formerly a leading citizen of Michigan City. —Rov. Petit, in Crawfordsvjllo Jail, attacked a fellow prisoner, and boat him most unmercifully; other prisoners had to separate them. Pettit caught him trying to steal his private correspondence. —Mr. James McGregor, ono of Torro Hauto’s substantial citizens, and who was largely interested in Cincinnati suburban real estate, was killed by the accidental discharge of his gun whilo hunting. > —Conrad Keller was found dead fn the woods, near Iluntingburg, skull crushed with a gun stock lying near him. Jas. Cano, known to have had trouble with him, was arrested on suspicion.

—Rev. James Campbell has boon convicted at Columbus of criminal- malpractice, with a penalty of thsse years’ Imprisonment. Miss Anna Huntsman, one of his parishonors, was the prosecuting witness. —Poor old Mrs. Johann O’Daiiy, knowing she was going to be evicted from her house at Lafayette, mortgago on which had been foreclosed, took a dose of arsenic and the sheriff found her dead in bed. —Rev. Milton Lee, Danville, lfpceived a “White Cap" letter somo time ago, telling him if he didn’t treat his family botter he’d meet a diro fate. He worriod so over it that his mind gavo way and he became violently Insane. —The vote in the Methodist churches in the Northwest Indiana Conference upon the question of admitting women to tho General Conference shows that out of a membership of 31,092 only 5,400 votes were cast. Of the votes cast 4,037 favored the proposition, and 1,363 were opposed, thus making a majority of 2,674 in favor of the question. —John Brewer, almost a centenarian. , and one of the first settlprs of (freenwood, fell and broke his leg, from the effects of which he is expected to die. Mr. Brewer assisted in founding the Presbyterian Church, sixty-seven years ago, and has, since that time, been a faithful officer and devout worshipper. . Ho is well-known in tho Presbyterian Church and as an old settler. —Three brothers named Demoss went ’coon-hnnting uear Ewington. On their return home, two of them, Newton and Edward, were behind their brother. The one bad reached home when he heard the report of a gun and loud hallooing. Returning he found that Edward had accidentally snot Newton through the groin, severing the fefnoral artery. The loss of blood was so great that he died. —Recently the Montgomery County Commissioners passed an order that every application for a liquor license must be accompanied with a check for the license fee, 8100, and in case a license was not granted the check would be returned. One applicant would not inclose the check and the board refused to grant a license. An appeal was taken to the Circuit Court, where the judge granted the license, overruling the order of the board in regard to the checks. —Julius Ghoul, Goshen gourmand, has finished his feat of eating fifty oysters at a sitting every day for two weeks. He won’t want any more this winter, thanks. —At a depth of 225 feet, Paoli has secured a strong flow of sulphur water, equal to anything at the famous French Lick or West Baden springs. The water is now flowing out se.eral inches above the casing. When th% fresh water is cased out, the sulphur is expected to be not less efficacious than the renowned Pluto.