Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 232, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1916 — The Tariff and the Farmer. [ARTICLE]

The Tariff and the Farmer.

A protective tariff with widely separated exceptions, has been the large issue for nearly a century, and as carried out in the country has been applied to products which at the time ■ were, ot witnm a reasonsDi6 Time, would probably be competitive with like products from other lands. Under this policy republicans placed reasonable duties on farm produets in the McKinley bill of 1892. These the Wilson bill of 1894 largely reduced. The Wilson bill, however, relands, as well as our annual statisall farm products. The Dingley bill of 1897 placed a wholesale protective tariff on farm products. This tariff was practically rc-enacted in the Payne law of 1909 and remained until superceded by the Underwood law of 1913. Republicans favored protection of farm products for the following reasons: First. Because they saw in the growth of our population and the rapid reduction of cultivation of our tained a substantial duty on nearly tics, an approximation of consumption and production. Second. Farming is not the simple process it was once to-be carried on by anyone, and taken up or dropped any time. A season, a year, a decade, will not span nor determine agricultural success. Farming is a profession now and ought to be the noblest of them all. It should receive first consideration instead of being made the victim of unwarranted legislation caprice of party venom. The farmer must combine the training of the engineer to understand and manipulate his complicated machinery, with the study of the scientist, to prepare the soil, seed, harvest and garner. Moreover, he must be a financier to judge when, how and under what circumstances to market his products, that best resuljts may follow. Third. The course of tariff legislation in other countries, Britain excepted, has been to place protective duties on farm products. Fourth. The results of the Dingley and Payne agricultural tariffs were satisfactory on the protective, competitive ana revenue basis.

It would be a bold statement in the light of all the facts and tables that have been shown, for the democratic party to have declared in favor of placing farm products, generally, on the free list. Yet fair dealing with the producers of the country required such a plain statement, if legislation such as was enacted in the Under*wood law had been contemplated. To do less was bad faith, yet nowhere in the democratic platform of 1912 was there a hint, to say nothing about an open statement, that the large feature of democracy’s tariff policy -which was given first place in the national platform and in the tariff law, which was given first place in the democratic legislative program, was to De the removal of duty from nearly all farm produces produced in the north and drastic reduction of others belonging to the section. The democratic national platform said nothing directly about farm products being placed on the free list, nor did it state, leaving anything open to inference, that its legislation would be of that character. The first important clausdAof its paramount clause was:

“We favor the immediate downward revision of the existing high and in many cases prohibitive tariff duties, insisting that material reductions be speedily made upon the necessities of life.” . - Speedy reduction of duties cannot be tortured by any honest interpretation into meaning a removal of duties. The idea involved in the word “reduction” indicates a lessening, but also implies a cbntnuance of form and substance of the original factor. So farmers may have been warned that duties on farm products would be reduced in case of democratic success as had been done in the Wilson bill in 1894, but no one was given to understand, or was warranted in understanding that the ditties would be removed and farm products, general-:, ly, placed on the free list. The change promised was a matter of diet, not of death. However, further on the platform states; “Articles entering into competition with, trust-controlled products dnd articles which are sold abroad more cheaply than at home should be put on the free list.” The products of the American farms do not enter into competition with trust controlled products and have not been sold abroad more cheaply than at home. The wheat, corn, rye, cattle, hogs, sheep, poultry, egg 3, potatoes and other products of the farm are not sold by our farmers in competition with any trust The only other provision of the Baltimore platform which relates to the duties on farm products is where it says; . “We denounce the action of President Taft in vetoing the bills to reduce the tariff in cotton, woolen, metal and chemical schedules and the fanners free list bill.”