The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-04-10
THE FARMER AND HIS MARKET.


The prospect at present is that we shall
have about &c. 900, 900 bushels of old wheat to
add to what now gives promise of being an
exceptionally large crop.
The glut here is emphasized by a CORE
spending one in England, so that there is little
chance of relief by shipping abroad. Accord
ing to the laws of trade we can sell our sur
plus in Europe, qualified by two conditions
There must be positive demand for Ameri-
can wheat, or we must create a demand for it
by undertaking competitors from Eastern
countries and Australia The crops of eastern
Europe and northern India having been good,
there is no pressing need of looking west of the
Atlantic for supplies As for undertaking
the ryots of India and the peasantry of Aus
tria and southern Russia the idea is not at all
popular, however necessary it is or may be-
come.
Practically we now have so, 900, 900 bushels
of wheat that we cannot consume and that
nobody wants to buy at what the producers Of
it regard fair price. In other words we have
gone into wheat growing too extern
sively. Last year the 100000 farm
ers in the United States produced
400 900, 900 bushels of wheat OF an average of
sixty bushels each. Suppose now that half a
million farmers, or one in fourteen, could have
been taken from the field and otherwise
proftably employed. According to the
ratio above noted there would have been
100000 900 bushels less wheat produced, so that
our present surplus would be but so, 900, 900,
instead of $4,000, O0O-quite great difference;
and had the half million families been with
to last years crop would have been but 3d.
900, 900, instead of 65 600, 900 bushels, and
our present glut would be reduced to compar-
alive insignifcance, and would be but &c, 000,-
900 bushels, which, taking the uncertainties
of yield, would be no surplus worth attention.
Herein lies the secret, if it be secret, of
the advantages to be had by encour-
aging home industries. Every man
sent from field to profitable
employment at forge or loom by that much
works relief to the farming population, re-
ducing excessive production and becoming a
valuable consumer of farm products The
same does not hold good when we ''econo-
mize" by buying more cheaply abroad. More
Americans are thereby driven to the plow
handles, and the demand is not increased
abroad, for the reason that foreign countries
have other sources from which to draw their
bread supplies. We simply compound our
difficulties by adding to an overplus already
much too great, and strike killing blow at
our safest and best patrons-the workingmen
of our own country, who consume only Amer
lean bread, and who bear just portion of the
burdens of government.
The narrow possibility of selling wheat to
Europe when the crop in Austria, Russia, In
dia and Australia fails, and to men who DO not
help pay our taxes, is not worth the sacrifice
of surer market right here at home. The
wheat raised along the Danube, in the Punjab,
or, it may be, in far away Queensland. The
American mechanics bread comes from the
wheat fields of Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and
Dakota. The wool in his clothes is grown in
Ohio, Colorado, Texas and California
The wages paid him goes back to
the pockets of American farmers
and in him they find their best customer
Admitting, for sake of argument, that what
he makes might be bought more cheaply
abroad. it is not desirable to drive him from
factory to field, where he must become the
competitor rather than the customer of the
American farmer. The people of this country
will not hastily vote a change in favor of a
policy that promises nothing but commercial
disaster, and no one will be slower and more
cautious in moving to that end than will the
American farmer.