The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1888-10-27
The Farmers Burdens.

From the Baltimore EreniRg Netcs.
great deal is being said on the stump and in the
press about the unexampled prosperity of this coun
try. And yet there are not less than million of
bread-winners unemployed and mortgages upon
farm lands will aggregate thousands of millions Ct
dollars Since 1873 we have had a series of shocks
and depressions and seldom anything like a sub
stantia business boom. Dizziness in trade has been
the cutlery after season, and it looks if
were gradually eating each other up the few heap
ing up colossal fortunes while the many are growing
slowly but surely poorer. All the wealth of the land
is drifting into favored hands and trade streams
from without are pouring in to renew and replensh
the tide.
Is not this fact and if it is, what is the OF
it? The farmer is the main producer and on him
the country necessarily leans When he is prosper
GUS the land is fourishing. And when he is poor
and i-paid every channel of business bears testi-
mony to it by its suggishness This is fact which
cannot have escaped the observation of the most
careless
And why is it that the farms generally and
largely mortgaged; why are so many farmers aban-
doning their occupations selling out leasing doing
anything to get away from their possessions and
into the cities to look for precarious livings and
why is farming so improbable in spite of the indus
try and economy practiced by tillers of the soil?
Simply because the agrculturist is taxed to death
In township county and State assessments his prop
erty is visible and tangible and pays its full share
of the local burdens, with opportunity to escape
in the slightest degree Then tine farmer is not pro-
tected by tariff. For everything he gets he must
pay his favored friends in the city average of Al
per cent advance levied upon him to keep out COM
petition, while his wheat and corn must follow the
simple laws of trade and be regulated in value by
demand and supply. For him, therefore, there Is
no chance. He sells in a cheap market and buys in
a dear one until his substance is wasted and year
by year he gets further behind until his land is
impoverished and he in despair and then he mort
cages sells or leases the place and punges into the
city to live as best he Thus it is that farming
is unattractive and unremunerative and thus it is
that many thousands of millions are invested in
mortgages upon farm lands.
With his opportunities the intelligent farmer
ought certainly to see his impending fate and seize
the opportunity to avert it. He is being literally
sucked dry while the favored class is growing into
nabobs and building up an aristocracy of wealth.
The country, with its wonderful resources, has
stood the drain much longer than any other
could have DONE but there is limit to its endurance
which will be surely reached. Farming is an I'M
attractive trade now and our uuexampled prospect
ty is in the brain of the fervid campaigner. That
some men have prospered and grown richer, enor-
mously richer in instances is indeed true, but
the mass has grown poorer and the millions of one
have been collected from the mites of the many.
The farmers may be slow to think and reason, but
they will get there yet. 1t is pity they have not
begun to think for themselves sooner.