New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1873-10-16

Tor the last eight years, not to go hack fur
Their than the conclusion of the war, ouI
imports of foreign merchandise annually ex-
coed our entire exports, including gold from
our mines, which all goes abroad, YOU will
naturally ask me how has the interest in the
meantime been paid, and how the balance
yearly found against US of the difference be-
tween the amounts of our imports and ex-
ports: l have just stated to you that we
owed substantially none of these national
aud state debts contracted during the war To
The iorelgn bankers at its close but we have
been paying the balances of trade, which
have been against US year by year. by eX-
panding our interest bearing bonds. running
for twenty and forty years, and selling them
sometimes as low as sixty cents on the dol
lar to pay the interest on the bonds them
selves, then already sold, and balances un Ill
we have sent out Of the country our notes or
bonds to the immense sum before stated
Now there must and will come time when
this sale of bonds abroad must stop; because
our national income exceeds our expend-
lures, and we shall not incur any new debt
and nothing will be left us with which to paw
the interest upon what we owe to foreigners
unless we export more than We import to an
amount sufficient.
In the production of that which is con-
sumed to support life Of men and animals, we
have, "a, aSficulturists, been skimming the
very cream from our lands, and, at no very
distant period, shall be Obliged to 90 back
and 90 over them again and renoyate those
which we have worn out. The time is within
the memory of many who sit before me when
the Genesee Valley produced the wheat and
flour which fed New England; yet within
five years wheat raised by labor costing two
dollars and fifty cents per day has been
brought from California, Is 900 miles round
the Horn, and ground in the mills of Roches-
ter, in the center of the State of New York
to feed its people. New England and New
York next received their wheat from Vir-
ginia, raised on lands now oyercrown with
dark pine sapplings, worn out by wastefu
and exhaustive culture without renovation.
Then st. Louis flour was the favorte brand in
our markets !; now our bread it grown still fur
Their west and north, and Minnesota and Iowa
are the wheat-producing sections of the coun-
try, and we look for our corn, which we once
produced at home, to the lands of Indiana and
Illinois prairies, where, I admit, it is still
produced in such quantities that, because of
the exactiOns Of railroads in their tariffs of
freight for transportation of coal, corn is the
cheapest material for fuel, were it not that
he who burns it is burning the very heart out
of the soil that cannot always bear the drain
of its lfe-blood without replenishing.
We have been boasting and acting as if we
could supply the world with breadstuffs and
so we have done almost, and can do, if the
iron horse is permitted to draw our wheat
and corn to the seaboard without too great
charge, and not eat up the crop before 1t
reaches the consumer; but we must remem-
Der that for every bushel wheat that crosses
the ocean, nothing comes back which goes
on to the land again, even if we do not pay
our debts, national or individual, with it.
Silks, satins, and broadcloths, which we re-
ceive in return, may dress cur sons and
daughters in the goodly array see before
me, but they do not dress the land, and the
effect has been that the wheat-producing
sections Of our country recede westward,
eating up new lands, day by day, in turn to
be given up, until jumping the alkaline plains,
the Rocky Mountains, and the Sieras, we are
bringing the food for the population of East
ern cities from the western slope of the Pa
ciic, raised in the rich fields of California.
by labor drawn from the mines, the only other
source of production from which to pay our
debts abroad, and after these shall be ex-
hausted neither the ''Star of Empire" nor
the production of food can further westward
take its way Let me give you an illustra-
ton of the manner in which we have used up
another natural product necessary to the
health and comfort of man, which we dealt
with as if boundless, and indeed it seemed to
be; and inexhaustibe, as indeed it was not.
How have we destroyed our pine forests,
extending in belt between the two oceans,
and of the width of ten degrees Of latitude
above and below the great lakes, Within
two generations We have so devastated our
forests, sending lumber all over the world,
besides using recklessly and extravagantly
for ourselves, that we are now depending
Ia Of IL, for no
means of building and furnishing our houses
with the same material that our fathers used
in building theirs, unless we quintuple the
price, and in addition content ourselves with
using much inferior quality.
In the same manner from our lands we
have taken all, year by year, and returned
nothing. Crop has succeeded crop, until in
many cases the farms are abandoned for the
purposes of tillage, because the production
in few years does not more than pay the
increased price of labor and material ex-
pended. Thus you will see the double drain
upon the country = first that the produce is
sent abroad and sold to pay the interest on a
debt which has not aided, and does not aid
production; secondly, if anything else is
brought back, it is nothing that prOfiteth
the land. We are literally, therefore, in this
regard, burning the candle at both ends and
it becomes problem of the deepest moment
to the statesman and agriculturist how far
this can go on and not sap the nations
wealth. Nay, not only this but there is
very little returned to the land from that
which we use at home. Sent into cities and
towns, and there consumed, that which
might be saved from it is lost by our waste
fulness and washed by the great sewers into
the rivers and harbors, choking them with
filth, and endangering the health of their
people by throwing that away which, il
brought again upon the land, would be rich
prOductiveness and untold wealth. There
can be no more instructive example of oul
recklessness as agricultursts than the waste
fulness of the very means we have Of enrich.
ing our lands. We boast of our civilization
and advancement in knowledge and the arts
Of agriculture, and we speak with scornfu
contempt Of the semi-barbarous Chinese
| yet they utilize every atom of matter which
may enrich the soil, and are thus enabled tC
| produce more of the means of sustaining life
and feeding people from rod Of land than
we obtain from an acre. But this drain upon
our resources by the payment of our deb,
abroad, from which we get no return, is no,
the only evil of our system Of indictment
The investment of money at interest simply
and not using il in manufacture, agriculture
or otherwise in aid of the production or prep
aration of the comforts and necessaries o
life, raises up and supports, of necessity, /;
class of non-producers which, living upon in
comes, the principal of which does not aid il