Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1896 — THE FARMER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE FARMER.

The Concentration of Wealth. “Many cite the concentration of wealth in a few hands as one cause of the farmer’s poverty, but is not that worse in other countries with different systems?” There is no country of high civilization in which it is so bad, except per-

haps in one or two where the process has been going on for 1,000 years, but in no country, ancient or modern, has the process been so rapid as in this. In 1860 there were alleged to be in this nation a dozen millionaires. Today there are at least 6,000 and probably many more. On this point wo have u n i m peachable testimony and

from an unwilling witness. Early in 1803 Hon. Roswell G. Horr, tariff editor of tho Now York Tribune, started out to prove that protection did not create millionaires. Under his direction a very careful census was taken in every part of the

United States by The Tribune’s agents. The lists were published weekly in The Tribune for correction and then compiled in a pamphlet. Tho number exceeded 4,000 and was soon proved to be entirely too small. Mr. Horr succeeded in proving to his

own satisfaction that only 1,300 were manufacturers. “And how were the rest made?” The enormous land grants and subsidies to railroads made a few dozens like Stanford, Crocker and Huntington. The sudden growth of western cities due to the hothouse system of forcing development made a few hundreds. Dozens like Jay Gould and his fellows were made by the system of railroad wrecking. Many were made by speculation in gold and government bonds, by the national banking system and many other schemes fostered by government. A few—very

few, it must be admitted—were honestly made by legitimate enterprises in which the government was not a partner, and many by the advance in real estate in our great cities. Many 1 others have carried the investigation much farther. Thomas G. Shearman, Esq,, the grea4

lawyer, has oonolturively shown that some 80,000 men own or absolutely control one-half the property of the United States; that 100,000 men own half the remainder, and that the great mass of laboring producers actually own very little if any more than they did in 1860. The results are simply awful. Ten men in New York city today hold the credit of the United Status absolutely at their mercy. If it were to their interest, they could tomorrow sweep away the gold basis and precipitate a panic in Wall street But the farmer is told that all this is none of his business and is expected to be controlled in his vote by the gold superstition. The Gold Superstition. * ‘How can there be a gold superstition? What do yon mean by such a phrase?” I mean just what the words imply—that a largo portion of the human race

has become possessed with the notion that gold is infallible, a notion as degrading in its way as the African snake worship. Nine-tenths of the gold monometallists in this country boldly proclaim that, while all other commodities change in value, gold does not. ‘.‘We know,” the savages say, * ‘‘that Mumbo

Jumbo is ugly and we believe that he is great” We laugh at the poor heathen, but the argument is on their side, for it never has been mathematically proved, and it cannot be proved, that Mumbo Jumbo has not great power ir the unseen; but it has repeatedly been' proved in every way open to the humar Intellect that gold is a shifting and un stable standard of value, far more unstable than silver, and that twice within the memory of men not very old it has changed in Value so suddenly as U. vitiate all long time contracts and disall industrial oonditi"~. (Concluded next week.)

As He Was and as He Is. HOW HE IS ROBBED. .Stupendous Decline in Farm Products. A PERNICIOUS FINANCIAL POLICE. Evils of Contraction—The Concentration of Wealth—Rise and Fall of Gold—The Effect of the Free Coinage of Silver. What Gold Monometallism Stands For. An Honest Payment of Debts—The Help Offered by the Ballot.

By JOHN H. BEADLE.

The accompanying illustrations are from New York newspapers of recent date. They are published to show the popular idea of the personality of the American farmer in the gold stronghold of the country.

I will invite your attention to two pictures. Twenty-five years ago the American farmer was a king. Poets sang about him. Orators praised him. Edward Everett held up an ear of golden corn before his audience and eulogized

the grower in such eloquent words that storms of applause shook the hall. We loved to read and quote the old stirring lines telling how “the embattled farmers stood" at Lexington and Concord, and it was universally agreed that they

were the salvation of the land. They were the hardy yeomanry, the free and independent workers, and even such foreign visitors as De Tocqueville went out of their way to describe the happy condition of the landowning farmer in this country. Washington gloried in being a farmer. Our greatest statesmen passed their

vacations on their own farms, among their horses and cattle. They delighted in rural pleasure, they worked and personally directed their employees, and from a season of this kind of life and close contact with the people they oame back to Washington wonderfully freshened by having lived close to the heart of nature, more American and more democratic and more in love< with their own land. Their

names were coupled in the popular lore with the names of their estates. It was Washington of Mount Vernon, Jefferson of Monticello, Clay of Ashland. Webster of Marshfield and Jackson of The Hermitage. Where is that farmer now? The Vilification. He is the gibe and the sneer of every clown who can get on the city stage in

spotted breeches. He is the butt of vile jokes in the city saloons. He shares with the mule and the mother - in - law, the plantation darky, the rusty stovepipe and the tramp as the stock material for cheap paragraphers. He is brought on the stage of every low theater as the stock vic-

tim of all the stale old practical jokes. “Hayseed” and “Wayback” and “Jay” are his regular titles, even among cultivated people, and in the slums * ‘farmer” is one of the vile epithets which provoke a fight. He figures in the illustrated comics as a half savage. Look at the pictures of the typical farmer in the New York papers and see something

like this: A long, lean, lank monstrosity, with bones showing horribly prominent through his clothes, a face like a pointed Gothic front, a nose that describes an Irregular arc from the lowest point between the eyes down over the mouth, and on his chin what is sunnosed to be a

whisker, but looks like a wisp of weather beaten hay. This is the farmer of today as the people of the cities are taught to consider him. And why this change? It is because he has been systematically robbed for 30

years and has submitted to the robbery and voted for more of it He is despised because he has consented to his own degradation. His very virtues have been made the means of his degradation. The farmers, and especially the men who till their own acres, are our great conservative class. They dread revolution. They love their country with an impassioned ardor born of close contact with the soil

—an ardor of patriotism which some writers have thought impossible in men reared in cities. Naturally, therefore, the northern farmers stood by their government in the great civil war. The Republican party was in power and acquired an immense prestige by the successful issue of the conflict Naturally

again, therefore, the great majority of farmers-credited all good things to that party. They could not believe that the party of Lincoln and Sumner and other friends of humanity would do aught of injustice. The Robbery. The war tariff was prolonged in time of peace despite solemn promises to the

contrary. Empires of land and hundreds of millions of money were given to great corporations. Credit Mobilier, the Indian ring, the whisky ring, the star route ring and scores of others followed in rapid succession, but though the farmers mu r m ured they did not revolt. They over-

looked the fact that parties are composed of men and therefore subject to change. They were slow to believe that the grand old party could contain schemers. On top of all the rest comes a financial system which has added 80 per cent to the value of money and depreciated the price of the farmer’s products in like proportion, and at the least signs of a revolt on his part ho is denounced as a traitor. It is assumed as a matter of

course that Wall street should strive for a rise in stocks, that manufacturers should lobby for a higher i tariff, that the Pacific Railway companies should evade payment of their debt. All other men can

vote and lobby to raise the price of what they own and be good Christians, but at the bare hint that the farmer is to vote for restoring silver to get a little better price for his

crops, the country rings with frantic cries of rage and denunciation. The farmer has submitted too long. He has lost the respect of -those who have robbed him, and it is much to be feared

that in great part he has lost his own self respect. His poverty has become is reproach. The Affliction of Abundance. “But there has been so great an increase in production. Now, why should

the farmer complain that prices go down as the size of the crop goes up? And how can you prove that elevating the condition of the farmer will elevate that of other laborers?” It is impossible to raise the agricultural class of any country without raising all the other classes who depend on labor for

a living. It is not absolutely impossible to press down the agricultural laborer and yet leave the city laborer unaffected, but it is very unlikely. The farmer, however, does not complain that he gets less per pound or per bushel when the crop is big than when it is small. What he does complain of, and what he has a risht to comnlain of.

is that prices have fallen so fast that he gets vtery much less money for a very big crop than he formerly got for a small one. Thus the bounties of Providence are turned into curses and he is coming to look upon abundance as an affliction. Let me call your attention to some figure®. In 1881 the farmers produced 418,481,000 bushels of oats and received therefor 1193,198,970; in 1883 they produced 571,302,400 bushels and received for it (187,040,264; in 1889 they produced 751,515,000 bushels and received (171,781,008, and so on down, the amount rising as the money

received for it fell, till 1895, when they produced 824,443,537 bushels of oats and received therefor $163,655,068. And the population has increased 70 per cent In 1870 we produced 1,094,225,000 bushels of corn, worth $601,889,080; in 1898 1,619,496,131 bushels, worth $591,625,627, and in 1895 2,15 1, 188,580 bushels, worth $5 6 7,5 0 9,106. O v erproduction.

you say, but divide the bushels by the population each year, and you will find that per capita the increase was quite small, and in such years as 1890 and 1894, when the crop was very short and the number of bushels per capita very much less than the average of several years ago, the price per bushel was still low. The Decline In Value. Since 1870 the production of hay in the United States has increased in almost exact parallelism with the increase of population, and yet the aver-

age value per ton has declined from $13.82 to $8.35. This last is the farm price as reported by the agricultural department for July; nevertheless, on the day I write this hay is selling in New York city by retail at $lB per ton, which is a beautiful illustration of how your city consumer “profits” by the loss of the fanner. Wheat is supposed to be an exception because our rivals in other countries are producing so much, and yet the figures are significant. In

1881, for instance, 383,280,090 bushels were valued at 1456,880,427, and in 1895, 467,102,947 bushels at $237,988,998. And yet the world has not as much wheat as it wants, and not much more than half as much as it would buy if it had the wherewith. There is evidently something the matter that

cannot be explained by that handy phrase “overproduction.” Has there been any overproduction of fat hogs? Every farmer knows that there is just now a great scarcity, almost a

hog famine. And yet fat hogs in the central region of the west are selling at 8 cents a pound or less, < when but a few years ago they sold at 6. Has there been any overproduction in milk cows? The census will show you they are less numerous in proportion to population than they were, and yet the price is going steadily downward. I s there an overpro-

duction of land? In two-thirds of the country east of Illinois you can today buy thousands of splendid farms at what they were assessed for in 1870, and in some of the finest parts of New York state they will sell you good farms at the assessment of 1860. Farmers do not complain at reduced prices for products of which there has been a very great production, but the figures show a decline, though not so great, in articles of which there is an admitted scarcity and that the general decline is very much greater than can be accounted for by the amount produced. Starving Midst Plenty. But as a matter of fact is there any overproduction? Have mankind more

breadstuffs than they can eat and more cotton than they can wear and more pork and beef than they want or more shoes than they need? Why, the largest wheat crop ever raised only amounted to three bushels per capita for the people of the civilized world, and, deducting seed and that made into whisky, little over

two bushels per capita was left for bread. It has been repeatedly shown that the world’s cotton crop is still 8,000,000 bales short of the world’s consumptive demand. Our own agrioul-

tural department has shown that the American people are eating ennui Awably less wheat per capita than they did a few years ago, and if you will take

the annual reports for 20 years and deduct that used for export and seed from the crop of each year and that fed to stock in late years you will find that 70,000,000 people are eating only about the same amount of wheat flour that 55,000,000 people did. In Europe also it has been shown that

nearly 100,000,000 people cannot afford to eat wheat bread. They are using cheap substitutes like rye and potatoes. Are we to suppose that they do that for fun? Enormous Losses to Agriculture. If you want to realize what enormous

losses American farmers have sustained because of the increased purchasingpower 'of gold, lookover the files of the gold papers, before this became a political issue,

before they had any interest in denying the truth. In the New York Sun of Sept 10, 1898, for instance, was an editorial of which this is an extract: For more than 15 years. 1878 to 1883, all the great primary agricultural staples have been declining in price, although there have been periods when the price of some one was high for a limited time. This is more notably true as respects secondary products, especially meats and lard, but the trend of the whole scale has been constantly downward, and the general price level at the end of each year was lower than at its beginning. In the meantime there had been no material reduction in the cost of production, the self binder, the gang plow, mower, hay tedder and hay loader and all other great Improvements in agricultural machinery having come into use prior to 1878. Subsequent modifications and improvements have been in the direction of greater facility in operation rather than of lessened cost. While it is true that there has been a material reduction in the cost of farming implements, such reduction has not always resulted in lessening the cost of production on the farm, as new machines have often displaced those which were but partially worn and which were quite as efficient. It is probable that upon farms large enough to warrant the purchase of full lines of improved machinery the cost of production has thereby been lessened 10 per cent, but such farms constituting lees than 5 per cent of the whole area under cultivation the aggregate saving from such economies has been slight and has probably been fully offset by the progressively increasing use of commercial fertilizers which has been found necessary in all the region east of the Mississippi, not to Increase the fertility of the land, but simply to prevent further deterioration.

The Yield of an Acre. While the cost of production cannot have

been lessened as much as 5 per prices for the staple products of the farm averaged 82 per cent greater during the five years ending with 1875 than now. This is especially true as respects the five corn, wheat, oats, hay and cot- 4 ton—which employ 105,000,000 ■ out of 206,000,000 acres now de- i voted to staple crops. fl The following table shows!] in five year averages the gold? value per acre (in the local! farm markets) of the product 1 of the five staples named for quinquennial periods since 1866 and an estimate of the

value with average yields of an acre under each such staple in 1893 at present prices: VALUE or AN ACKB’S PRODUCT. 66-70. ’7l-5. ’76-80. ’Bl-5. ’B6-90. ’9B. C0rn....512 84 sll 80 $9 62 $lO 25 $8 81 $8 85 Wheat.. 18 16 11 90 12 00 10 20 907 000 Gate.... 10 92 981 858 917 750 075 Hay .... 18 28 14 88 11 57 11 15 10 19 10 00 Cotton.. 28 01 28 55 17 65 15 68 18 84 10 65 Total.. .S7B 21 $75 94 $59 42 $56 40 $49 44 S4O 75 Average 15 64 15 19 11 88 11 28 949 815 You can find all that denied or skillfully evaded in The Sun nowadays, but that cuts no figure. Nobody denied it

before this became a political question. The-de-cline still continues, and there is every indication that it will continue. And now the great ques-

tion is, What is the farmer going to do about it? On him depends the solution of this all important issue. The fate of bimetallism is in his hands. A Simple Fact. “But is not the money question-tec complicated for farmers to master it in

the brief time between this and the election?” Not at all. In* its present shape indeed it is singularly simple. It can be reduced to two or three plain questions,

perhaps to one, and that is, Has silver depreciated or gold appreciated since 1873? On their answer to that depend the votes of a million honest farmers. Monometallists say gold has stood still while all other things have cheapened. We say that silver has stood almost unchanged while gold has advanced enormously in value, and, what is more, we prove it by every line of reasoning which can be applied to the subject. That sik

ver is by natural law far more stable in value than gold has been proved from geology, from mineralogy, from metallurgy and still more by comparing the fluctuations of prices in different countries having the different standards or in the same country at different times. Every one of these tests

has yielded exactly the same result. The fluctuations since the principal na-

tions adopted the gold standard have exceeded all previously known. But here is a simple test which the farmer can easily apply for himself: Take the average of prices in your neighborhood for the five years ending in 1875 (it is not fair to take one year) and the average gold or greenback value of a ten ounce bar of silver at that time. Divide and see what that silver would have bought. Do the same for the five years ending with 1895, and you will find that the silver will buy more. Is it not arrogant and insulting nonsense to say that silver has depreciated when it will buy more of the products of your labor? Here is a table to help you in the calculation <

Price of Price of Prices* wheat, cotton, silver. per bushel, per pound. per ounce. 187?11 47 ST 61 • 1873 1 31 18.8 1 9 1874 1 48 15.4 1 g 1875 1 12 15.0 IM 1876 1 34 12.8 1 » 1877 1 17 11.8 1 » 1878 1 84 11.1 1 15 1878 1 01 6.9 1 12 1880 1 25 115 1881 1 11 lit 1 » 1884_.. 10? 10.5 101 1886 86 10.6 1 06 1886 87 9.9 99 1887 80 9.5 W 1888 86 9.8 98 1880 90 9.9 98 1890 88 10.1 1 04 1891 85 15 90 1892 80 8.7 86 1898 86 7. 78

N. Y. Herald.

N. Y. World.

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Commercial Advertiser.

Truth.

N. V. World.

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N. V. Press.

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N. Y. Herald.

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Judge.

N. Y. World.

Life.

Judge.

N. Y. Press.

Judge.

THE NEW UNCLE SAM. N. Y. Herald.

N. Y. Herald.

N. Y. Recorder.

Punk.

N. Y. World.

N. Y. Herald.

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Judge.