Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1910 — THE FARMER ALSO PAYS TOLL. [ARTICLE]

THE FARMER ALSO PAYS TOLL.

President Taft is going to give a dinner at the White House in honor of the Honorable Joseph G. Cannon, speaker of the house. By that simple process he will tell some persons just what he thinks of them—if. indeed, he thinks of them at all. .

1 he Republican state convention is to be held .on April 5. 'That is not quite April 1, as the last one was, but it is close enough to have the same; effect. Brother Manly Should be able to talk'just as well on the fifth as one the first—that is, if he gets a chance.

The Marion Chronicle, straight asks this question: “Why should Republican leadership be afraid to champion the tariff law which President Taft so convincingly defends?” If this question is aimed at Mr! Beveridge and his state organization they should come forward with the answer.

The Indiana correspondent ot the Cincinnati Enquirer says that “there is not a remote possibility of the Republicans endorsing the Payne-Aldrich bill at their state convention.” We shall see as to that later, of course, but if they don’t endorse it, will they have the courage to say just what they do think of it?

Senator Beveridgef’s chief organ, the Indianapolis Star, brands LaFollette, the Wiscon-

sin insurgent, as a “blatherskite” and “sensational demagogue,” but praises' Beveridge as a “constructive statesman.” There be Republicans, however, and many of them, who are calling Beveridge a "destructive” personage, who is even less desirable than the more outspoken and candid LaFollette.

Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island is the real leader of the Republican party, with Cannon and other as assistants. Mr. Aldrich has publicly declared that the government lias been and is now spending three hundred million dollars more per year than is necessary. And now it is proposed to create a “government business methods commission” which is to suggest change. The admission that the Republican party has spent $300,000,000 more each year than it should have spent is a complete justification of every charge of extravagance made by the Democrats against that party.

The Washington correspondent of the New York Times thus sizes up the various “splits” that afflict the Republican party. I here is a foolish but prevalent idea that the present trouble in the Republican party is entirely due to a few ‘insurgents’ ; and an equally foolish and nearly as prevalent idea that it is traceable to the tariff. The actual fact is that the situation of JBBI-1882 is duplicated; that the party is split not only on these major issues, but on a thousand other things. In states where the tariff is perfectly satisfactory the party splits on some local issue like patronage. In states where an insurgent is a joke the party is split on local option. And if the party can’t find anything else to split on it splits on the Pinchot issue.”

It is clear that a determined attempt is to be made to convince the farmer that he is not being robbed along with the rest of us. He has been held responsible for the high prices. We have- told that the retailers are forced to sell at

the present exorbitant prices in order to meet the insatiable demands of the farmers. Of course no one tries to explain how it is that beef cut from American cattle slaughtered in England costs less than beef in New York. And yet that can oply mean that the difference between the cost of cattle and the cost of beef here goes to some one else than the farmer. For the cattle that go to England are sold at the same price those slaughtered in this country. Yet on the basis of the same selling price for cattle, meat brings from 5 cents to 10 cents more a pound in New York than in London.

In the News -was printed a few days ago a letter from a Hendricks county farmer, in which it was shown that the boasted prosperity had not reached the farmers of that rich county. The plain truth is that there is somewhere a middleman who gets in between the farmer and the consumer and takes the toll of both. Farmers can not get to the consumer any more. * * * There is some one else in on the deal, and bulk of the money goes to him. Our friends would indeed be “easy marks” if they allowed themselves to be led to believe that they are getting anything like a fair division.—lndianapolis News.