Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — AID FOR WHEAT RAISERS. [ARTICLE]

AID FOR WHEAT RAISERS.

“On Monday of this we?k, “says the Indianapolis Sentinel, “wheat jouched the lowest point it has reached since the war with one exception. This is a suggestive ! act. It cannot be credited to a lack of intrinsic value of wheat.

There has beeu *.o inflation of wheat grains. They contain just as mueh nutrim nt as ever, and j ust as much in proportion to their weight. So far as known there is no lack of confidence in wheat.— People , have ju3t as high regard for it as they have had in years gone by. Neither is there any cheapening of production that co’d account for it. There is no very recent improvement in cultivation that would materially reduce the general labor cost and no advance in fertilization that would materially affect the general product of

land. Meither h’s there been any specific discrimination of law against this grain. On the contrary the McKinley bill increased the duty on wheat 5 cents per bush-, el in order to protect the American farmer against the ruinous competition of foreign grange, s.— A'hat is the math r with wheat, anyway? Like silver, it shows a teudtncv to depreciate in yalue in the face of every natural reason for not doing so. Can it be possible that the decline is really due to an advance in that by which value is measured? Is it another evidence of Prof. Taussig’s prop* osiiion that ‘the appreciation oi gold and the depreciation of commodifies are one and the same thing? “Is there not also m this fact of the decline of wheat an urgent call for some remedy? The Republican party, after carefully considering the decline in value of silver, decrded that the best way to dop the decline was to creite an artificial mirket for the metal. The Populists advance the same plan for upholding the value of grain. Both propose the purchase of the commodity and the issuanc e of paper money based # on the deposits of the goods in government warehouses. The Republican plan waß adopted and the Populist plan rejected. Was this just? As an impartial objector to both plans, can. the Democratic party consistently retain the Republican silver law and not adopt the Populist wheat law? Thero is no apparent reason why the owDer of silver mines should be provided with an artificial market for his commodity while the same is refused for the commodity of the farmer. It is palpablv unjust that this discrimie nation should be made against the faimer, and the Sentinel insists that if the protective policy is to

be maintained in the one case, it shall also be maintained in the other. Either repeal the Sherman law or euact a sub -treasury bill. “Thvre is another discrimination that seeds attention. Under the McKinley law the American producer of sugar receives a bouns ty of 2 cents per pound, while the producer of wheat receives noths in". As was clearly demonstrated by Governor Hogg in his veto message, quoted in our columns a few days since, the sugar bounty is not excusable on any ground o:i necessity. The crop pays a reasonable profit independent of the bounty, and is aim st wholly controlled by wealthy planters who are not entitled to aid as objects o;i charity. Why should bounty be given to them and none be given to

the producers of wheat? Wha ; justice is there m any such discrimination t ainst the northern farmer ? Evidently the interest of the farmer is to stand for equality of rights and insist either on a bounty to wheat producers or a re* peal of ihe sugar bounty. And not only the farmers but also every other class of American oitizens will find it advantageous to stand by the Democratic priuomle of “Equal rights to all; special privileges to none,’ ”

Dr . I. B. Washburn, handles the celebrated Tolley’s Kochinoor eye glasses, the best made. We in* vite attention to tbe ‘ad’ “JJee Again as in Youth,” in another column.