Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1918 — WHEAT AND COTTON AND SENATOR WATSON [ARTICLE]

WHEAT AND COTTON AND SENATOR WATSON

Candid Answer to Question Asked by Junior Senator at State Convention. A More Insidious. Hypocritical Plea Was Never M.*le to Indiana Farm Voters. (Lewis A. Taylor) In a speech at the Republican Convention lately held at Indianapolis, Senator Watson said: “My fellow citizens, if there is to be a price put on the wheat of the farmers of Indiana, why shouldn t there be a price put on the cotton of South Carolina? I do not say this in a spirit of sectionalism but in a spirit of Americanism and in a spirit of fairness to the people of the mighty North. Harry New and I and your Indiana delegation, when that question comes again, will vote as we voted before, not in any spirit of antagonism to the people of the South but to have them feel the measure of the law just as you farmers of Indiana.” He asks a fair question that demands a fair and candid answer. That question has come to the farmer many times and in various forms. It does not always come to him in terms of “cotton” and "South Carolina." He has often wondered why a price is not put on nails and wire fence and binders and farming implements of all kinds, and the many things he has to buy. In fact, if his attention had not been specifically called to cotton with a deliberate wave of the bloody shirt the Indiana farmer never would have given "cotton” or “South Carolina” other than a casual thought. But why does Senator Watson hasten to assure us that he does not say this in a spirit of sectionalism? There is no record that any one in that gathering had accused him of what he himself by insinuation regards as inappropriate. There are other products quite as important as cotton upon which no price has been set and he could have addressed himself to any of them without making any reference to sectionalism. In place of the words, “cotton of South Carolina,” why not substitute “hogs of Ohio,” “potatoes of New England,” “corn of lowa,” or “rye and barley of Wisconsin?” Out of all the great range of American farm products, cotton alone could be used as a spade to dig up the bones of the Confederacy so honorably buried by Gen. Wheeler and his brave boys of the South on the bloody slopes of San Juan hill. Without an issue to which he can appeal to the intelligence of the farmer, he goes back in desperation to issues all but forgotten and addresses himself to the ashes of the reconstruction period of the Civil War. What are the facts? Is cotton higher in proportion than wheat? On July 1, 1914, cotton was selling at 1314 cents per pound. It is now selling at 34 cents, an advance of nearly 200 per cent., or it is nearly three times .s high as in July, 1914. Wheat now sells at Indiana points at $2.10, an advance of 200 per cent., or three times the price at the beginning of the war. In the light of these figures, has the cotton farmer been favored at the expense of the people of the “mighty North?”. In the wheat products that he must buy. does he not “feel the measure of the law ’ in exactly the same ratio as the wheat farmer of Indiana who must buy cotton products? The cotton farmer is a one-crop farmer. He must buy all bis other supplies. Does he not f£el ♦hs “pleasure of the law” when he buys pork and lard? Hogs are selling now at s2l per hundred (surely an Indiana product), an advance from the rather modest price of $3.50 per hundred during the Roosevelt panic of 1907, to heights hitherto unknown, without arousing the sympathy or patriotic interest of either of the Indiana senators to the weight or the measure of the law” as it falls upon the shoulders of those who consume hog products. Isn't it rather odd that a price of SIB.BO per hundred pounds of beef does not wring from the heart of Senator Watson a cry of anguish at the evident tendency of the Democratic administration to favor the beef growers of lowa, Missouri and Ohio? How it must harrow up his mind to note the favoritism with which the party in power permits the corn growers of the great north-central states to reap a price for com higher than ever known before and equal in its profits to that of cotton. Indeed, the user of corn products is feeling “the measure of the law” without the necessity of either of our United States senators voting to that effect. A more insidious, hypocritical plea was never made to the Indiana farm voters. Grievances the Hoosier farmer may have, but they are not to be solved by appeals either to the “bloody shirt” or to proGermanism, or to the profiteering spirit of some Indiana farmers. In keeping with his utterances in Virginia and other places, probably with no intention of doing so, nevertheless the intended effect of this vicious propaganda is to arouse sectional hatred, to array the farmer of the North against the farmer of the South, than which there can be nothing more deadly to the cause of liberty and nothing that could bring greater satisfaction and joy to the Potsdam gang.