Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — A Word to Farmers. [ARTICLE]

A Word to Farmers.

Republican protectionists, when unable to prove that their sort of protection increases wages, are fond of saying that at any rate it enables capitalists to go on manufacturing and thus affords employment to the men who eat the products of the farmer. In this way they figure out that Republican protection protects tha farmer. The thing for the farmer they say is the home market, and this Republican protection affords him. But the argument will not bear examination. Mr. C. Wood Davis, whose statistics are frequently quoted by The American Economist, organ of the Republican protectionists, finds that between 1850 and 1889 the population of the United States Increased 175 per cent., while in the same period our production of cattle increased 185 per cent.; of cotton, 201 per cent.; of corn, 257 per cent.; of wheat, 889 per cent.. and of oats, 411 per cent. Most of those years were years of high protection, yet what would have become of the farmer if he had been forced to depend for the sale of his products upon the home markets While population was not quite trebling, the production of cotton was rather more than trebled, that of corn was much more than trebled, that of wheat was vastly more than trebled and that of oats was more than quintupled. Republican protectionists say that protection makes more men use the farmer’s products, but here w# see that the farmer kept far ahead of the growth of population. Crops must have rotted on the ground had the farmer been forced to depend on the home market alone.