Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1910 — FARMER IS VICTIM. [ARTICLE]

FARMER IS VICTIM.

He Always Gets Hot End of the Tariff Poker, Says Senator Shively. “At every turn the farmer has been handed the hot end of the tariff poker,” says Senator B. F. Shively, in an address. “The Farmer and the Tar Iff," prepared especially for the farm, er* of Indiana. . "In the closing days of the cam

paign, Republican leaders are making frantic appeals to the farmers to come to the assistance of the Republican ticket against the rising tide of revolt in the cities,” says Senator Shively. "Why should the farmer vote to vindicate the Payne-Aldrich tariff? Or why should be give countenance to that cunning difference-of-cost, plus-a-profit evangel in which panic-stricken statesmen are seeking shelter? Government has no fund out of which to guarantee profits. It can legislate profit to one man only as it legislates losses to another. American agriculture is a nonprotected and non-protectable industry. “The genius of man cannot devise a system of impßrt duties that could protect the farmer. Every year millions Of bushels of his wheat and'corn and millions of pounds of his hogs, cattle and cotton go out to the great surplus market of western Europe. Would a single bushel or pound go there but for the fact that it brings a higher price there than at home? Any day of the year the price of wheat is lower at New York than Liverpool,, lower at Chicago than New York, lower at St. Paul than Chicago, and lower at Fargo than at fit. Paul. The surplus wheat from the pampas of South America, the table-lands of India, the valley of the Nile, , and the plains of Russia is poured into the markets of Western Europe in competition with the surplus wheat from the farms of the United States. There, under the competition of the whole world, is fixed the price of staples of the farm, and from there the price ranges downward past every farm aid ranth . . Stream is outward. “The stream of surplus is outward, not inward. Duties of one hundred dollars per bushel or ten dollars per pound could not help the fanners to the extent of a single penny. He stands between two markets, neither of which he controls. He makes bis sales at prices fixed by ethers. He makes his purchases at prices fixed by others. He sells his staples at prices fixed by world-wide competition and then buys the things he needs for self and family, under what conditions? Under the same conditions on which he sells his products? No. He buys in a market from which foreign competition is barred by prohibitive tariff schedules, and from which domestic competition is removed by do-' mestic combinations organized under the shelter of such schedules. “A protective tariff protects the woolen and cotton goods the farmer must buy, but cannot protect the corn and wheat he has to sell. It protects the farm machinery, the furniture, the Iron ware, woodenware, glass and glassware, carpets, paints and dozens of other things which he must buy, but cannot protect the oats, rye, cattle or hogs he has to sell. It protects the things he must buy by enabling the trusts controlling them to write up artificial prices on them. Thus the farmer sells at normal, competing prices, and buys at highly abnormal and fictitious prices written up. by greed without reference to cost “So situated, the farmer, for forty years, has been the special victim of the system. All this time he has been exchanging a part of his annual output for watered prices instead of for goods. Swift advance was made from the sickle to the self-binder, and other improved means of producing, harvesting, storing and marketing his crops. But by the cunning device of artificial prices on what he must buy, these advantages served only to make fortunes for others rather than for himself. “If the farmer of this country receives higher prices than once prevailed, so does the fanner in every other agricultural country In the world. If the fanner is better circumstanced than formerly, it is in spite of, not by reason of the protective schedules. For forty years the farmers have been making millionaires by the thousands. But how many on the farm? By the medium of watered prices the locusts of monopoly have eaten away the natural rewards of agriculture, and fattened Into enormous wealth the interests thus pensioned on this oldest occupation of history. “The Payne-Aldrich act, as have all kindred acts before it, helps the farmer just as does the fly in his wheat, the smut in his corn, the rust in his oats, and the bote in his horses; save only that it loses him more than all these combined. The duties on his farm products are . worthless to him. They are purely political duties which cannot protect and were intended only to hoodwink, deceive and cajole him into voting for other duties that rob him on all he brings onto the farm or into the home. No, the farmer is the choice vfttim of the system and always has been. At every turn he has been handed the red hot end of the tariff poker. His 8 % -cent hog never becomes 35-cent bacon until after it leaves the farm. "No one can rightly pretend that this is class treatment of the subject. The class principle is in the protective statute itself. Protectionism, as it is exemplified in practice today, io the very essence of classism. It* has cast the class spirit over society, and the farm home has been the sufferer from its into beneficiaries and victims in the ratio of less than 5 to 9S, and the farmer nowhere appears as a beneficiary. Farmers differ In politics as do other men. But with the tariff an issue, the differences that divide the farmers thia y«*r into hostile camps to nullify one another's votes on election day are the kind of differences that drag neighbors into court to pay costs, enrich lawyers, and beggar themselves. -