Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1891 — ACKNOWLEDGING THE CORN. [ARTICLE]

ACKNOWLEDGING THE CORN.

A Manufacturer and a Rabid Protection Organ Admit that Our Goods Are Sold Cheaper Abroad thin at Home. The protectionists are forever getting themselves into a hole, They denied last year with indignant protestations that any of our manufacturers sell their goods cheaper abroad than in the home market; but now comes one of these very manufacturers and states over his own signature that'such is the fact. This particular manufacturer' is not a believer in the humbug called protection, and he has nothing to lose in making the statement that American wares are bought by the foreigner at lower (prices than by the American buyer. The manufacturer in question is Mr. A. B. Farquhar of York, Pa., who has a very large establishment for making agricultural implements and machinery. He ought to know whereof he speaks. In a recent letter, Mr. Farquhar says: “Of the agricultural implements used in South America, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa, we now manufacture a very large proportion in the United States. In some sections American implements and machinery are used almost exclusively; fully three-fourths of the plows used in South America and South Africa are mado in this country. Our implements for export must be sold at very low prices—that is, at a small profit to the manufacturer, since we must compete with England and Germany. The prices obtained for our agricultural implements sold abroad average from 5 per cent to 15 per cent less than what we get in this country. As I have several times had occasion to observe, the mauufacturer who is able to export his goods can have no use for protection except to enable him to extort more money from home purchasers than he is able to get from those abroad.” What is still more remarkable, one of the very lijgh tariff papers which wero loudest and most brutal in denouncing the charge that manufacturers sell cheaper abroad than at home, has recently confessed that the thing is sometimes done. This is the Chicago Inter Ocean, which said several weeks ago in discussing the cartridge trust (protected by a 45 per cent, duty): “Just look at it. Four concerns, protected by a stiff tariff against foreign competition, combine and crush out and buy out all competitors in this country, and then compel every American consumer to pity them 25 per cent more for goods than a Canuck has to pay for the same gooffs, or a greaser in Mexico! This is protection with a vengeance.” it verily is!