Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1892 — A HOME MARKET [ARTICLE]

A HOME MARKET

Not Essential to the Prosperity of Our Farmers. Farms Untilled Where Factories Exist in Profusion. Congressman Warner Tells Why Farming Sees Not Pay—Protection Has Depopulated the Country In the Manufacturing States of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Here, let us say, as a farmer, located on a bit ofwtnd one hundred miles away from the nearest city. That city is his market. There are farmers all about him; he cannot sell t» them either his staple products or the occasional surplus or fruit or garden stuff which unusually good seasons may bring upon his hands. The cost of transportation is so much taken from his profits. Here steps in the protectionist. There is in this region, say, a stream capable of abundant water power. “Let ns put a woolen mill here,” the protectionist urges; “let us agree to pay something more than we pay now for woolen stuffs, and so make it an object for some one to come here and start a manufactory. Hundreds of hands will be employed; the railway will be put through ! We will build up a town right in the midst of our farms and have a market at our very doors. Good prices then for everything.” It is done; the mill is built, the railway is laid, the town grows np. And the farmer—what of ’him? Strange to say, we presently find him getting poorer. Where is the mistake ? It is just here —in the agreement to “pay something more than we pay now” for manufactured goods. In the protectionist’s theory that “something more” is pnt away in a quiet comer; in the actual practice it comes out and plays the mischief. If the farmers in this locality want a woolen mill, those in that locality want a cotton mill, and those in the next county an iron furnace, and so on. The result is that the farmers pay everywhere “something more” for everything they buy. But this is not all. The promise of higher prices for wheat in the “home market” calls for scrutiny. The appeal, sifted down, comes to this : “Pension a number of com consumers to come and buy of you. Subsidize an army of artisans to settle at the farm gate. Pay them for making goods at a loss, and out of their profits they will purchase your abundance.” Wher« Hat* the Home Market Gone? This, however, is not the worst. It is but fair to admit that though the protectionist was always at fault and the farmer never helped by “protection,” yet that, in fac,t, the farmer did once have the ‘ ‘home market” for which he bargained—paltry as might be the whistle for which he had paid so dear. But nowadays there is no such thing as a “home market’' for any considerable portion of his produce. The farmer in the Genesee valley not merely sees the trains run past him to Rochester, laden j with flour rolled in Minneapolis from Dakota wheat, but uses the same flour in his own household, and his village ! butcher sells fresh meat from beeves | killed at Kansas City. No manufacturing town dreams nowadays of looking to the locality about it for any supplies, except only the cheapest part of its “garden truck.” The labor markets of the world are open to the American manufacturer, who thus has free trade in the one tiring he buys most of —labor. He lives in a laud where transport facilities are so developed that he need not depend upon the locality about him—and he does not in a locality whose surplus of food products is so great that their first price-fixing markets are found at Liverpool, a free trade city, and so he gets them, too/ at free trade rates. The American farmer has sold his birthright and has lost his pottage to boot. What the American farmer most needs is a home market in which he can purchase his supplies as cheaply as his competitors purchase theirs, and if he can not secure this, then he should have the poor privilege of making his purchase where he is compelled to make his sales, and be permitted to bring his goods home without being compelled to pay unreasonable taxes and fines for carrying on legitimate business. But as to the “home market” fallacy, no logic is half so remorseless and resistless as that of experience. It has be«n worked out thoroughly under ideal circumstances, the characteristic nature of which no one can question. Before the war no states were more thriving in agriculture than New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. And they earliest of all developed their manufactures, and throughout their length and breadth built factories of “protected” industries on every hand. There never was a farming population more alert to exploit a home market; there never were manufacturers better pleased to create such a market if it could he so created. What is the result? New York Worst of AIL Worst of all, however, and most characteristic, is the situation in New Yetk state. The most populous of any m the Union and once the first in agriculture, surpassed by no other in fertility, her Geneeee valley was the granary of the and supplied our expert trade long before Minnesota was a state, or Dakota had a name. Her Orange county

gave the name to the first standard brands of butter, and her Herkimer county did the same for cheese—all this long before the war. Of late, her old great city lias become greater till in population it now approaches 2,000,000. Brooklyn, her second city, has grown to 1,000,000 from a quarter of that number. Buffalo, at, the western end, numbers 250,000; Rochester, 150,060; Albany, 100,000, and Syracuse and Troy, 75,000 each, while there are numerous others from 20,000 to 50,000. She has meanwhile become by far the greatest manufacturing state in the Union. Every one of her large towns is a manufacturing center, and throughout the state, close to every one of the old farming centers, extensive factories, mills and workshops have assured to the farmer whatever advantages the best possible “home market” can give. Not merely this, but the state as a whole has increased iq wealth with unexampled steadiness and rapidity. Since the war the vineyard interest has become an enormous one in her lake region; she has become the first of the northern states in fruit culture; her old rich farming localities are today better worked and more fruitful than ever, and her farming population not decreasing as a whole. There can be no question as to the prosperity of the state of New York; there can. be equally little that a great share of that prosperity is due to her farmers. Do they share it?

The Tribune’s Testimony. The following is published in the New York Tribune, the great home market organ: “State Assessors Ellis, Wood and Williams are making their annual visitation to the several counties selected for this year’s inspection. Each year they look into the condition of affairs in half the counties, so that it makes their visits to each county once every two years. Saturday they looked into Albany County, tomorrow they will visit Schenectady. “ ‘We find a general depreciation in the value of farm lands,” said Assessor Wood. ‘We have visited fourteen counties —Monroe, Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Chenango, Broome, Delaware, Sullivan, Franklin, Clinton, Es«ex, Washington, Warren and Albany counties. In all we find the same condition of affairs. City property is increasing in valne, while farming property is growing less and less valuable. I can not see any way for it to improve, and in a few years you will see more tenant farmers than anything else. I don’t see how these insurance companies that have advanced money will get out whole. , No one wants to buy farm lands here. They can’t get their money out of them. Most of the farms were bought about war times, when big prices were paid. In Washington county I had an illustration of the receding value of farming land. A man took a mortgage for SIO,OOO on a farm just after the war. He has held it ever since, and today will take SB,OOO for the entire farm, after foreclosing the mortgage. “ ‘The reasons for this state of affairs are many. In the first place, the farmer here can’t compete with the farmer in the west. There is very little grain raised within our borders now: potatoes don’t bring any price; butter is selling in the dairy district for fourteen cents a pound, and ocher products are equally low. This is goxi for the consumer, but bad for the producer. A few years ago western butter was not wanted; today it gets the cream of the trade in New York city. In a few years you will see the present owners of farms in many instances tenants on them.

‘The cities are prospering though. New York city has added about $50,000,000 property to its real value the past year; Brooklyn has Ridded between $20,000,000 and $30,000,000 to its real property; Buffalo has increased $5,000,000; Rochester between $2,000,000. and $3,000,000, and Albany and Syracuse sl,000,000 each.’ ” The Homo Market Club. But there'is one point further. As the home market is to be a benefit to the farmers, of course it is the farmers who have organized the Home Market club, of Boston, which is doing so much just new to uphold this beneficent system of protection. But the fact is that it is the manufacturers who are doing it. not the farmers at all. It is as if the people of the Cannibal islands should organize a missionary immigration society as a wire and easy way of getting a meat supply. The home market theory may be briefly stated as follows ; If you farmers will only give ns manufacturers enough money to enable ns to go into business, and will consent to pay prices high enough to make it possible for us to continue our business at extraordinary profits, we will agree to buy what we need—what we must have from some source—from you at low and steadily diminishing prices—if we can’t get them cheaper elsewhere. That is all there is to it.

JOHN DEWITT WARNER.

Railroads and corporations all over the state are evading the new tax law, sod are testing the constitutionality of foe increased rate. This is the same law that the Republican press over the state have been howling themselves hearse, in trying to make the masses of the people believe that the farmer was the one who suffered the increase. We don’t know of any railroad company that is fighting a law that injures the farmer.—Winchester Democrat.