Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1887 — ANGRY WOOL GROWERS. [ARTICLE]

ANGRY WOOL GROWERS.

They DoNotLlkc th« of ih« I’resldenr on Th«t Subjfct At Wednesday's session of the conference of wool growers and wool dealer? of the United States, called by the President of the National Association of Wool Growers, the following was unani-mously-adopted: “The wool dealers and wool growers of the United States, -representing a capital of over $500,000,000 and a constituency of a million wool growers and wool dealers, assembled in conference in the city of Washington, the 7th day of December, 1887, having read the first annual message of the President to the fiftieth Congress, declare that the sentiments of the message are a direct attack upon their industry, one of the most important of the country, and in positive violation of the national Demo ratic platform of 1884, as interpreted- by the party leaders, and accepted by the rank and file of the party; that the argument made by the President for the removal of our protection against foreign competition, is the old one,repeatedly made by the enemies of OHr industrial progress, and effectively answered in nearly every school district of our land, and so thoroughly disproved by the logic of facts and demonstration of experience and history, as to need no answer from us. - * “We acknowledge thal our “small holdings,’ our scattered and unorganized condition makes us the easy prey of the free traders, but we had a right to expect something different from the chief executive of the Nation, at once the most happy, most prosperous and contented of any of the world, made so by a policy of protection and development which he now seeks to destroy. We had a right to expect that our Prosident would favor the wool-growers of the United and confess oar deep disappointment that instead, he favors the interests of foreign competitors. “Justly alarmed at his position, we make an appeal from his recommendations to the people, to all the people, to the seven and three-fourths millions of our fellow-citizens engaged in agriculture, to the millions engaged in manufacturing, to the army of wage earners whose wages are maintained by the protective system, to the tradesmen and merchants whose prosperity depends npon ours, confident that their judgment and decision will be based upon justice and patriotism, and therefore ;for the maintainance of the American policy of protection to which the country is indebted for its unexampled develop*ment and prosperity. “To demonstrate the injustness of the President’s policy and the fallacy of the remedy he proposes for the reduction of the surplus, we point to the fact that if the whole amount of the revenue derived from wool was abolished it would reduce the surplus only about $5 000,000 or less than ten cents per capita of the population, which is paid by foreigners, while the old war taxes he recommends retained yield over one hundred and nineteen millions and is a direct tax per capita of two dollars each and is what makes up the great bulk of the surplus of one hundred and forty millions and which fosters a most dangerous monopoly. “We would further add the following statistics in regard to the wool industry. The annual revenue derived from import of wool under the tariff of 1887, was iess than $1,700 Under the reduced tariff, of 1883 the revenue last year was over five millions. The number of sheep in the country in 1884, was 50,626,626. In 1887 it was 44,759,314, a decrease of nearly six millions, and a decrease in the annual wool product of over 25,000,000 pounds, thus showing that reducing the tariff by the act of 1883 ha 3 increased the revefiue from imported wools and diminished the number of sheep in the United States about twelve per cent., and the annual product in the same proportion. “The President’s policy would be to bring about the destruction of this industry, and the same policy of reduction or abolition of the tariff would end in disaster to all the other industrial and productive enterprises of the country.