Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1892 — HAS SPOTTED THE THIEF [ARTICLE]

HAS SPOTTED THE THIEF

THE FARMER DISCOVERS THE REAL ROBBER. Buck’s A*sertl<in» Denied by Worker* in All Industries—The Whole Report Is Discredited and Is a Bad Investment for Republicans. It’s the Manufacturer. For thirty years the farmer has been Missing money. Just who took it and how they took ft has, up to date, been a mystery. One year he would perhaps miss a part of the value of his farm. Another he would find, to his surprise, that his accounts would be several hundred dollars short, saying nothing of his lost labor. Thirty years of this experience has left a large portion of Eastern farms valueless and covered Western farms with mortgages. During this time our protected manufacturers have been exceedingly prosperous. So much so that they constitute more than 30 per cent, of 4,000 millionaires which, according te the New York Tribune, we have produced in this time. Of course a few sharp-sighted men long ago discovered that it was the manufacturer who, with that most skillfully fashioned burglar tool, ■* protective tariff, was stealtnily filching money out of the farmers' pockets. These men pointed toward the rnanufa'turer, but this gentleman has persistently and good-naturedly denied the‘Charge and has expressed such great sympathy for the poor farmer that the latter has not only not prosecuted the manufacturer, but has believed him in preference to the disinterested on-looker, and has wasted thirty years following up wrong clues given by the wily manufacturer. The burglars have even made the farmer believe that they were his best friends, and have induced him by voting for the McKinley bill to present them with a new set of tools, keener and better than the old ones ever were. The bold and reckless manner in which these tools are being used has opened the eyes of the farmer and he is now, as elections since October, 1890, indicate, giving chase to the real robbers—the manufacturer and his agent, the Republican party.

A controversy now carried on through newspapers at Little Falls, N. Y„ between several protected manufacturers ©none side, and Mr. P. W. Casler, a prominentofficerof the Herkimer County Grange, and one or two editors on the other side, shows how hotly the manufacturers are being pursued and their frantic efforts to elude their pursuers. We extract the following from Mr. Caster's letter of Sept. 22: It te true that protection is good for the present interests of the manufacters: no one can doubt it. It is their own institution, gotten up by them, maintained by them and for them, and under it theya e becoming immensely rich. It is doing for them all they could expact. But is it doing or has it done so much for the farmer, on whom they are all absolutely depending? Is his condition better than it was twenty years ago? Is he getting rich? The farmer wno is not only feeding this great nation, but who is sending abroad from $600,000,000 to $700,000,000 worth of products every year to get money to pay our manufacturers for what they are making for him? The government allows the manufacturer to regulate the prices. Why should he not get rich and why should not the farmer get poorer when the latter has to take at home for that portion of his produce the same price that his surplus sells for to go abroad and be sold in competition with the cheapest “pauper labor’’ in the world? I assert —and challenge Mr. Walrath or any one else to deny it—that the farmer to-day is the onlylaborer m this country who is competing with the so-called pauper labor of the old countries, selling his products In the foreign markets and taking the same prices at home. Our aggressive policy of protection has not only not furnished the home market, but has helped to drive away to other places customers who would have come to us for our surplus produce had we been more willing to exchange with them; ana has caused the development of the wheat fields of India and Russia; the cotton fields now being opened up in Africa; the dairy interests of Canada, Australia and European countries, with all of which the farmers here have to compete an 1 do compete. The only help for the farmer is a reduction of his expenses, the cheapening of what he has to buy so that the pay which he gets for his produce (the price of which is regulated entirely by supply and demand) and which Is his wages, will go farther —will buy more for him. As the price of one pound of cheese will buy two pounds of sugar this year, while last it would buy but one so that, as far as sugar is concerned, he is as well off as if he were getting twice as much for his cheese. The reduction of his expenses and a broadening pl hi: ~ar!iet jp the only relief in sight for the 'nrmer. It is offered to him through tariff reform only. The Democratic party offers him free tin, free lumber, free salt, free coal and free wool. Who uses more of these articles than the farmer and who would be more benefited than he, unless it would be the manfacturers, who could then produce cheaper, even if the compensatory duties on the manufactured articles were removed? As the reduction in the cost of raw sugar has increased the consumption already 24 per cent, and helped the manufacture of everything into which sugar enters, so with tin, lumber, coal, salt, weol and iron. It is not “dear coats” or other articles the farmers want. It is cheap things. Then he will use them to develop his farms, increase his output, enlarge the home market for the manufacturer, and as prices go down consumption increases, living costs less and manufacturing increases, we would soon be in an era of posperity in which the farmer would have a share and bear no more than his just burdens.