Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1888 — Protection to Agriculture. [ARTICLE]

Protection to Agriculture.

The question has been discussed generally with reference to its destruction of American manufactures, but there is equally involved the home market of ninety per cent, of the fruits of our agriculture (the pittance of ten per cent — six per cent, excluding' cotton—should not be considered except by the cotton growers. Of the cotton crop seventy per cent is exported and the rest is manufactured here. Of the other agricultural products, ninety-four or ninety-five per cent, finds a market here, and only five or six per-cent, is 'exported. The chief argument used by the opponents of a protective tariff is that it is oppressive upon agriculture. It may be upon the production of cotton, but to the other branches of that industry it_is as nourishing and protective as to the cotton or woollen fabrics, or ironor steel goods. Paper is a necessity in one form or another, in business and domestic life, and its manufacture is an absolute support of agriculture. In the year of 1887 the value of the product of the paper manufactories of the country was $95,000,( 00. Paper is made from vegetable fiber, rags, old paper, straw, corn stalks, wood and grasses, amounting in value in 1887 to about sso,ooo,OnO,and in addition to this $20,000,001 in chemicals and other substances were used in its manufacture. It is fair to say that more than one-half of the value of all the paper we use is a contribution of waste material,or fibrous products, which would be of little or no value except to manufacture into paper. Woollen goods also illustrate the benefit of protection to agriculture. In the last census year the value of our woollen fabrics was about $267,000,000, and last year sloo,o>.o,oooin value of American wool was purchased and manufactured into them. The product of the starch industry amounted in 1880 to $7,500,(09. Its manufacture afforded a market for ss,ooo,ouoin corn and potatoes, and I have been assured that the product for the last year has required 4,<'00,000 bushels of potatoes and 15,000,000 bushels of corn. ■ In the census year of 1880 agriculture contributed twenty-nine and a half million pounds of broom corn to the broom industry. Tbe amount contributed to

the manufacture of glue in 1880 was nearly three millions of dollars—-largely a waste product from slaughtered domestic animals. Soap "which the Mills bi}l puts on the free list, in its manufacture consumes from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 in animal grease, a large proportion of which would be waste except for that great industry and the manufacture of crude glycerine, of which 9,000,000 pounds were made 5 n the year 1887, all from the same agricultural products. The curled hair industry, which furnishes us with mattresses pnd goods of like character,utilizes an absolutely waste agricultural product—except for it—the hair of slaughtered domestic animals, cattle, hogs and horses. The value of the raw material is not less than $1,750,000 yearly. Of glucose, $17,0C0,000 worth is manufactured annually in this country, consuming 20,000,( 00 bushels of corn. Each individual farmer may not contribute to the quantity of hair or fat of domestic aninjala that is utilized, nor to the immense amount of straw made into paper; his potatoes may not be disposed of to the starch factory, or his corn to the glucose factory, but the total consumption of those agricultural products of the various industries increases the price and every farmer receives his proportion of benefit from the increase.