Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1908 — THOUSANDS OF MILLIONAIRES [ARTICLE]

THOUSANDS OF MILLIONAIRES

Made by the Tariff—But Rot One 1$ a Fanner.

(From a speech by Hon. B. F. Shively at Shoals, Oct 12, 1908.] When the rising tide of artificial prices on iron, steel, woolen and cotton goods, and on glassware and crockery and furniture, farm implements, all forms of and substantially everything that goes onto the farm, struck the farmer, was he to protect and recoup himself by writing up the prices of his own products? Right there came the rub- The farmer stands between two markets, neither of which he controls. Qthers fix the prices at which he must buy. Others fix the prices at which he must sell. American agriculture is an expert industry. in some of its staples it has been export since before the American Revolution. This Industry has no combination at home with which to limit production, write up artificial prices to the American people, and unload surplus at low prices abroad. Such a combination is impracticable and impossible, and, if possible, could only spell ultimate misery and starvation to society. Millions of bushels of American wheat and corn and millions of pounds of American beef, pork and cotton go every year to the great surplus market of western Europe. Not a bushel nor a pound would go there but for the higher price paid there —at least enough higher to pay the cost of transportation. Wheat is sowed some place on this earth every day of the year. Wheat is reaped some place on this earth every day of the year. * ♦ The surplus grain from all these fields is poured into the surplus markets of western Europe in competition with the surplus grain from the American farmer. In that surplus market the level of prices is fixed, and from there the downward incline plane of prices extends backward past every farm and ranch in the United States. On any day of the year, except in rare instances due to purely local and temporary causes, the price of wheat is lower in New York than at Liverpool, lower in Chicago than at New York, lower in St. Paul than at Chicago, lower at Fargo than at St. Paul. To this market, dominated by the competition of the whole world, the farmer brings his wheat, his corn, his beef, his pork and his cotton. If the price of the staples in his annual output rises, it is a rise that attends the same staples produced by the peon of South America, the ryot of India, the fellah of Egypt and the former serf of Russia. The rise in the level of farm prices in the last ten years, due to an addition of three billion dollars to the volume of the world's gold, was general and uniform throughout agricultural countries, but during all this time International Harvester Company farm machinery could be and has been purchased cheaper in any othet agricultural country of the world than could the American farmer buy it at the door of the American factory where it was made. American mills, barb wire, shovels, axes, watches, sewing machines and scores of other articles have been and are now sold cheaper in the foreign markets than at home. • * Even some of the products of the farm, after they leave the farm, are so manipulated by domestic trusts as to almost dtptble their price to the consumer without increase received by the farmer. By reference to the market reports in the files of the Indianapolis newspapers, it will be found that on April 7, 1888, hogs were quoted' at $5.35 per hundred, and the best bacon at 9% to 10 cents per pound; oh April 14, same year, hogs $5.75 and the best bacon at 11 cents: on May 14, hogs $5.75 and the best bacon 11% cents, and on March 14. 1889, hogs $4.85 to $5.00 and the best bacon 11% cents. Th4se, of course, were wholesale prices. The quotations today and the record of actual sales show hogs at from $5 to $7 per hundred and the best bacon at 21 cents per pound. Here is an increase of about SI.OO per hundred on hogs and over SIO.OO per hundred on the bacon taken from the hog, and not one cent of the excess increase on the bacon goes to the farmer who produced it. The same thlsg is measurably true of all other parts As the hog. The meat trust controls the situation, lays the consumer under contribution, gathers in the profit and invites the farmer to support the tariff that supports the trust.

The farmer’s selling prices are world’s prices. He labors in competition with the whole agricultural world. Duties of 1100 per bushel on his wheat and corn and per pound on his beef, pork and cotton could not protect him The duties on wheat, corn, beef, pork, hay, cabbage and other farm products In the Dingley schedules are purely political duties. These duties cannot secure to hte farmer higher prices on his sales. They are, placed in the statute only to cajole and deceive him into the support of other duties which plunder him on his purchases. The system leaves him to sell his product at prices dominated by the competition of the whole world and to purchase his necessaries at high artificial prices fixed by domestic monopoly, induced, licensed, fortified and perpetuated by affirmative acts of his government at Washington. If he enjoys any degree of

prosperity, It is tn spite of the fly tn his wheat, the rust in his oats, the stout in his corn, the cholera in his hogs, the bots tn his’ horses and the Dingley tariffs in his market, and not because of them. The steel, lumber and other trusts may capitalize the taxing power of the government and write up v thd prices of their product 100 per cent; the farmer cannot capitalize his $1 wheat into $2 wheat, nor his 75-cent corn into $1.50 corn. He may cast away the sickle, the cradle, the reaper, the Marsh harvester and bring on the selfbinder, the grain drill, the corn-shred-der and other improved forms of farm machinery to multiply his producing power, lessen cost, decrease waste and to Increase economy in making, storing and marketing his product. The cunning device of high artificial prices on all things he must buy sponges up the profits and absorbs the gains arising from the cheapening forces of skill and invention. Whatever of margin between receipt and expenditure he has left at the end of the year is the remnant of the harvest left by the licensed locusts of monopoly which swarm his buying market and pluck him on all that he brings onto his farm or into his household, if he has money in bank, it is usually the fruits of stinting economy, pinching selfsacrifice and deprivation on the part of himself and family, rather than the natural reward of his Industry. The natural rewards of American agriculture are ambushed away In the pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars picked up by and concealed in the fictitious prices charged for trust-controlled goods, and who are turned in splendid streams of unearned increment into the coffers of government favorites, some of whom startle the country as, much by their ostentatious charity as do others by their ostentatious profligacy. American farmers have been creating splendid fortunes and making millionaires by the thousands, but to this hour not one on the American farm.