The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1872-01-11
CROPS AND TARIFFS.


The wool crop of the United States for
the year ending June lst, 1871, is esti-
mated at 10l ,2S4 ,676 pounds, for which
the growers have probably realized about
100000. The cotton crop FOR the
same year was about 3 100000 bales of
$50 pounds each, of l 1856, 600, 900 pounds,
yielding to the growers upwards of Sz0o,'
100000.
These two items, of agricultural pro-
duce look large, and the public is accus-
toned to regard them as of especial ma
tional significance, and they are of great
intrinsic importance, but not entitled at
all to the pre- eminence which they oc-
cupy in the popular estimation. The
pre- eminence is doubtless owing to the
fact that they enter largely into the tables
of export and import, whereas many
staple articles of produce consumed chiefly
at home are of more aggregate value than
the cotton or wool of the country. We
hope to be able, from the forthcoming
statistics of the late census, to show the
national production of corn, potatoes grass,
wheat aud other grains, and of horses, cat
tie, sheep, swine, &c, Of which scarcely
any is exported, because the home mark
ct is the best. We have no doubt it will
appear, when these statistics are publish
ed, that the great value of the cotton crop
is exceeded by that of corn, wheat, pota-
toes, or the grasses and the farmer who
will study the facts cannot fail to realize
how vastly more important the home
market is to him, than the foreign, and
how surely the prosperity now enjoyed
by the farming interests, would be brought
to an end if Congress shall fail to extend
fostering protection to the great manu-
featuring interests Of the country. The
farmer, more than any other class, should,
| for his own best interests, insist on such
tariff on imports as will sustain and en-
courage our manufacturing industries, be
cause in them lies his only security for
remuneratiye prices for his surplus crops.
| If Congress should so reduce the tariff as
to stop any considerable portion of our
| factories and throw their many thousand
hands out of employment, these hands
would be forced to fall back upon the soil
for subsistence, and so, instead of being
the best customers of the farmer, would
become his competitors and rivals, and
the products of the farm, deprived of the
home market and driven to depend on the
tender mercies of the markets Of Europe
would be reduced in value to the wretch
edly low prices that prevailed before the
policy Of protective tariffs was inaugural
ed in this country, when what sold for 81
to so cents per bushel and other produce
proportionately low. We remember wher
before the tariff Of 1928 was enacted WI
were a lad in village store and exchang
ed yard of brown shcetings for bushe
of wheat, or four bushels of oats, or fv'
pounds of butter. Whereas, now, unde
the policy of protection, the scale is com
pletely reversed, the bushel of wheat will
to-day, pay for ten yards of the same
quality of muslin, the bushcl of oats foI
three yards, the pound Of butter for three
yards, &c. This practical Illustration
which is but one of scores that might b'
adduced, ought to determine every far
mer, and indeed every citizen who cares
for the welfare of his country, to rais'
his voice and use his franchise to pu
down the free trade faction, who will
English money, and in the interests o
English factories and importing house
in New York, would if they could, de
stroy our infant and growing American
manufactures and ruin at once both ou
manufacturers and our farmers.-PttS
burg Gazette.
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