The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1851-02-13
The Great Grain Market OF the World.

But three years since we were assured that
Europe was to afford us a market for almost
countless millions of bushels of wheat and corn.
elf the energy of our own people" said the
then Secretary of the Treasury, 'can add
$il 1892 1872 to the export and supply of our
breadstufis and provisions in single year, what
could they not add to such products if they en-
joyed free Of duty the markets of the world %
An increase of domestic exports similar to that
which had then taken place in consequence of
the famine in Ireland, might give, it was sup
posed, in the year lS49 an amount of not less
than three hundred and t,centy- nine millions Of
dollars; and yet we have now reached the year
1851, and are exporting less cotton, less food,
and less tobacco than we did before that time.
That we haveless food to export is certainly most
fortunate for our farmers for there exists no mar
ket abroad, nor is it likely to exist. We have
now before us the London Mark Lane Express of
last month, by which it appears that the average
prices of wheat throughout the kingdom range
from thirty -four TO forty shillings per quarter of
cents to doUarpe b,shel Now, admitting that
the anticipations of the late Secretary had been
realized and that we had now this large guam
tity of food to send abroad, at what price would
it sell? Would it command, in the market of
Britain, even thirty shillings per quarter, or
seventy-fve cents per bushel, leaving for the
farmer even fifty cents here? 1t certainly
would not. His anticpations have not been
realized, and we have less to sell, and there
fore prices are maintained; and this is regarded
by him, we doubt not, as evidence of the sound
ness of the theory on which was based his al
iteration of the tariff of 1916. So is it with all
these English economists. Their predictions are
never realized, yet are they never disheartened.
British free-trade must be right, however wrong
they themselves may be. We are now import
ing enormous quantities of food, in the form of
iron, and we can export scarcely any to pay for
it, and this is supposed to be the process by
which the farmer is to secure high prices for
his products and obtain his iron cheaply In
Ohio, says one Of our exchange papers, "one
thousand two hundred square miles are under
laid with iron. A region explored in 1888
would furnish iron sixty-one miles long and
six miles wide; a square would yield 5000
600 tons of pig iron; so that this district
would contain 000,000,000 tons, which
would last 300 years-as long distance
certainly as any man looks ahead! The
States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Hi
nois, Maryland, and Virginia possess inexhaust-
IDLE quantities of iron ore"
And yet Ohio Indiana, and Illinois, which
have only food to sell are rendering themselves
daily more and more dependent for iron upon a
distant country, in which wheat sells at from
ninety cents to a dollar per bushel and in
which iron will again sell for ten pounds per
ton when the remainder of our furnaces shall be
blown out, as they are likely soon TO be. Our
farmers who have food to sell are daily dimin-
ishng the competition for the purchase of their
products, and for the sale of iron, the result of
which must inevitably be, and that ere long,
cheap food and dear iron.