The Weekly Kansas chief. [volume] (Troy, Kan.) 1872-1918, 1883-02-15
naD. G. HASKELL ON PROTECTION.

Mr.. Haskell. | move to strike out the last word
ana wish TO put one or two facts against the state
% %ents Of the gentleman from Indiana Mr.. Cobb.
When he says the farming interests in this country
need no protection, want to say to him that the ag-
rcultursl products last year 8 500 090 600 by
the estimates of the Department of Agriculture
Outside of cotton and tobacco a2 per cent Of that
was eaten in America, in the home market. made un-
der protective policy. Only one-third of the wheat
raised in the United States was shipped abroad
while twothirds of it were eaten at home
Let me give the figures used in my speech in the
opening of this debate. In 1910 there were Just
about onehaf the number of farms there are now in
the United States. The farming population has
doubled in forty years. The entire population of
the United States has trebled Ii Il 900 900 in
lsi0; it is 50 900 now. Had the agricuturiss of
this country increased pro rata with the total popu-
lation there would have been 5000 900 more of them
in the United States than there to-day. They
have not increased pro rata because under the pro
teetive policy outlined by Clay, and Webster. and
Jackson, and by the fathers of protection labor has
been drawn from agriculture the competition redue-
ed In 1t, and labor turned into manufactures. To
day there in the United States IL 100000 people
who do not raise pound of agricultural products
more than the iatio that existed in lsio7 900 20 of
population TO eat of the farmers product. Every
farmer in 1910 had only four persons buy of him.
consumers. To-day he has six persons to buy of him
consumers.
In Kansas City. the great market of the State of
Kansas are two institutions typical of the power
which makes the price of agricultural produets-the
one the Anglo, American, which ships the products
abroad, and the other the great packing house of
Plankinton, Armour & Co., the largest firm in the
world, that is maxim. beef and pork for the home
market. The combination of the two. the demand
for the home market 81 per cent. and the demand
for the foreign market per cent is what gives the
price 10 the farmers products.
You people on the other side, in your free-trade
frenzy, tried to prove that manufactured products
are higher under protection than under free trade
when the statistics show at every CENSUS, that agr
cultural products are going up year by year higher
IN price, with steady increasing demand and that
here IN the United States manufactured products
are going down year by year under the stimulus of
American competition produced by American pro-
lection.
stand here voting for protection because the far
mers interest Is his selling interest because know
that protection builds mills that protection builds
shops, that IT opens mines that it constructs rail-
roads, that takes out Of agriculture into man
ufacture that it makes a market for the farmers
products for my people. know to-day the price of
beef and pork and cents pound, as il is on the
prairies of Kansas, is made because the United
States is the greatest manufacturing nation in the
world know the reason why my faFnae~96re r<c.e>
perons is because they have a better and richer home
market in which To sell their products than the far
mers of any other nation in the world. know that
to-day the most depressed and distressed population
Of Great Britain is the agricultural population
know that to-day the philanthropists and state
OF Great Britain are devisng ways and means for
the alienation of the distress of the farming people
of that kingdom. know to-day in protected Amer
ica the farming population of the United States is
wiser, happier, richer than any other agricultural
population of any nation iuIthe world. IApplaus-l