Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1892 — Wool. [ARTICLE]

Wool.

Congress pushes the button; the trust does the rest. Whc n domestic production makes the market price, the duty does not protect and the trust must collect the plunder. The 2,000,000 farmers producing wool cannot form a trust and colloct their “protection boodle” of 11 cents per pound from their customers, the manufacturers, but the manufacturers can and do collect from their customers, the people, not only the 11 cents per pound on the wool in their cloth, but 11 cents on each pound of shoddy as well. This is their compensatory protection, and they have 45 per cent, additional to pay “difference in wages. ” They rob the farmer of every cent. He must sell to them at the foreign value of his wool to save himself tne cost of foreign freight. Some send their wool abroad to get a better price. Here are our exports of wool for six years past; 1886 2,138,030 1887 257,940 1888. 22,164 1889..: 141,576 1890 281.042 1801 291,922 Would our American farmers have sent this yool abroad for sale in foreign markets if the price here had not been under the price abroad? No American farmer ever received L cent more per ton for his wool because of a duty on foreign wool, because tho price here was made by his own competition, and he had no trust to fix prices and collect boodle; but the woolen-mill owner has collected and pocketed every penny of the farmer’s protection, because he had a trust to fix prices and collect the money.—T. E. Wilson.