Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1888 — Protection and the Farmer. [ARTICLE]

Protection and the Farmer.

The farmer is especially interested in the maintenance of a policy that encourages the.growth of manufactures in this country. His benefits from a protective tariff are two-fold. The number of those who consume farm products is increased without a corresponding increase iu the number of farmers. Villages and Cities make a profitable market for many products of the farm which could not be exported. Hence the greater the percentage of consumers engaged' in. some non-competing bus-iness-such as mining, manufacturing, and the mechanic arts,— the broader the farmer’s market, and tfie more ttyat those thus enqploye4 can earn, the better customers they are pertain to become. Any policy tending to make the calling of these workers less attractive, by reducing their eariiings or adding to their hardships, will induce some of them to become tillers of the soil and compel all of them to observe increased economy in purchasing the necessaries of life.

The free trade philosopher is accustomed to dismiss these facts with a wave of the same hand with which he points to his favorite refuge, “the markets of the world” ready to absorb the agricultural surplus of the country. The folly of such dependence becomes apparent when it is found that these convenient receptacles for that surplus of farm products which the free trader’s policy would entail, “are already quite well supplied. The people of Europe will take no more whea£Corn, .nteat, etc, than necessity compells. them to buy, and of these they will buy from America only what they cam get here cheaper than elsewhere. The preachers of free trade, who, like the London Times, ‘'cannot rest while the United States are unsubdued,” have addiessed theiite selves especially to voting farmers. Not long since tons of pamphlets written by a member of the Cobden Club, and printed,in London, were scattered throughout the Western states. In these our farmers were pictured as ground down by extortions made possible by a protective tariff, which they were urged to throw off and demand free trade with the world as a panacea for all their ills. Upon the string thus attuned to British interests free trade advocates have since steadily harped—until the question of reserving our home markets for the benefit of the people by whose energy they have been built up, or handing them over as a free gift to foreigners, has become the foremost issue in a Presidential Campaign! Should there be can there be, any doubt as to the decision?