Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1894 — TO WOOL-GROWERS. [ARTICLE]

TO WOOL-GROWERS.

The Men Who Sacrificed Their Interests Must Be Beaten at ' the Polls. To the Republican Wool-Growers and Thoss Engaged in Sheep Husbandry in Indiana; The great wrong with which we have so long been threatened is now consummated. The “party perfidy and dishonor,’' named by President Cleveland in his Wilson.letter, now besmirches the> pages of our statute books. Whisky trusts and sugar trusts are amply provided for. The $8,000,000 and more annually collected as customs duties on foreign wools that came into competition with your wool and mine in our own markets have been sacrificed, and we are to be taxed forty millions upon our sugar to increase the wealth of the Democratic sugar trust as a supposed equivalent for a contribution to a purpose not to be named. • The whisky tbust is amply provided for. Coal and iron ore in the mines of trusts and wealthy syndicates are to be protected against foreign competition. But the more than one million farmers and flock owners, isolated and scattered through the land with their flocks without money for bribes, or the control of more votes than their own, must submit to a competition calculated to annihilate the great sheep industry of the United States, ; forcing-our .farmers _to relyon_snch_ crops and cereals as, by reason of their already overproduction, are glutting the markets at unremunerative prices, and ruinously exhausting the fertility of their soils. Well may the President cry out as he did, “How can we face the people after indulging in such outrageous discriminations and violations of principle?” And yet, with his conscience smarting as if pierced by the stings of ten thousand scorpions, he. lacked the honest courage to face those avaricious and grasping combinations, and by the exercise of his constitutional power defeat a measure so infamous; He skulked into hiding that the “perfidy” might be consummated and the honest toiler of the land ruined. H&d that perfidious bill been one granting a pittance to a soldier foi the loss of an arm at Chickamauga, or a leg on the bloody field of Gettysburg in the defense of his country, no one doubts the patriotic alacrity with which he would have consigned it to the tombs in his watchfulness of the public treasury by the exercise of the veto power. With the protection you deserve and are entitled to have, your home market is the best wool market in the, world, because the American people consume more wool per capita: than anyother people in the world. With wool on the freelist, your clip comes into competition with two billion pounds annually produced by cheap labor on cheaper lands, affording perennial pastures, with a less transportation cost to the producer than would be incurred by the Indiana farmer in reaching our Eastern wool manufactories, where most of our wool finds a market. Hence we must changf the law, or abandon our flocks. We cannot afford to do the latter. Oui only hope is in the Republican party. The eleven traitors to the farmers interests holding seats in Congress from this State are, many of them, seeking re-election. They and others holding like political views must be beaten. - -/- To accomplish that, we must necessarily incur some expense. Th( means must be raised by those whe seek the change. We are connected with no such syndicates, or heartless and grasping trust from whom wf can expect aid. As a metnber of a committee for the purpose, I appeal to every Republican wool-grower ot the State, and farmers generally, to contribute a small portion of theii means to that end. Please forward such contributions as yon are‘willing to make to me at Wabash, Ind., and I will receipt for the same— if-it is even very small —and shall be personally responsible for the propci expenditure of every penny so received. I will, as far as practicable, see that each Congressional district of the State gejts its proportion in accordance witty the contributions made from each. Let us, my fellow wool-growers, and those engaged in sheep husbandry, make a determined effort to displace thbse who so wantonly have sacrificed that great interest of the farmer, that more than fifty years experience as a wool grower has taught me is indispensible to successful husbandry. We cannot afford, in this trying hour, to fold our hands and let the elections go by default. We must teach those who have brought this hitherto prosperous country to its present deplorablt condition a lesson they shall nevei forget. C. Cowgill. Wabash, Ind., Sept. 11.