Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — Effect of the Tariff Upon Agriculture. [ARTICLE]

Effect of the Tariff Upon Agriculture.

The report of the House Committee on Agriculture on the effects high tariff taxes have had on farming in the United States is a compact presentation of the leading facts of this highly important subject. It summarizes the official statistics of the decline in the prices of agricultural products and in agricultural land values, and presents with them the facts of agricultural indebtedness in five leading agricultural States, as shown by the census of 1890. We summarize here one of the valuable tables contained in the report to show the mortgage increase between 1880 and 1890 in amounts and by percentages in the States named: Increase of Mortgages Amount of Percentage from 1880 to 1890. Increase, of Increase Alabamallo,7oß,ooo 418 lowa 21,996,000 76 Illinois 14 486,000 158 Kansas 37,730,000 200 Tennessee 13,634,000 310 These figures, it must be borne in mind, represent the increase merely in

a single class of mortgages in each State—not the total amount in any State. The totals as they are given in the report do not represent the total “farm and home” mortgage of the States named, but only the debt secured by mortgage on farms exclusive of the similar debt on home property and other real estate without farming lands attached. No Bepublican can complain of this treatment, for as we recently showed from the Porter census the number of real estate mortgages filed in Kansas and Nebraska during ten years of high tariff (1889 to 1890) largely exceeded the total number of inhabited houses in both States in 1890. No such wrong as this can be left without a remedy, and the agricultural States must have their remedy in the enjoyment of their right of way, unobstructed, to and from their European markets.