Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — “Happy Farmers.” [ARTICLE]

“Happy Farmers.”

The American Economist of Oct. 14th quotes from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that “Ogden farmers are in good humor .over the protection prices which are being paid for their produce—barley at 73c, with tendency upward; potatoes firm at 50c, and cabbage $3 per hundred.” The Ogden farmer must have a narrow mind and be of a happy disposition if he can extract sunshine from cabbage, potatoes and barley when his neighbor’s protected wheat, corn, oats, rye, wool and horses are selling for unusually low prices, and wh.n farm lands everywhere are declining in value. As long as prices of our leading farm products are determined in foreign market the farmer need not Irouble himself about trying to change them by tariff legislation. But there is need of his troubling himself about the price of what he buys, which consists largely of things imported and the price of wSich can therefore be raised by legislation. This Is the end of the tariff rope on which he should do his pulling unless he prefers, as he seems to do, to continue in the debtor class.