Nevada County picayune., 1888-03-28
AGRICULTURAL.
Protection and Agriculture.

III Ills dttiItSS III NiiiN"-' ''' ' ~'D' 22 MT. Chauncv NJ. Depew. who IS much talked of inconnection with the Republican nomination for president says: "The factory doubles the value of the adjoining farms for the farmers whose tariff eXactions are too small to be calculated. " This is the argument which the protection ists have always used when address ing farmers. and it is the one they are using now. Ii is based upon the assumption that without a high pro tective tariff there would be no fac tories, and that the great majority of farmers are directly beneiltcd by factories. The assumption is not justified by the facts. If 1t were true there would he no factories without a prohibtory tariff, there would no objection worth noticing to such tariff. But the fact is that q low tariff would benefit manufacto- ries. because it would enable them to manufacture their goods at much less cost than they would be able to compete with foreign markets. More markets would require more factories, and if factories benefit farmers. low tariff would be in the interest of farmers, because 1t would encourage the building of fac tories.
 But is it not true that protected factories benefit farmers generally. The farmers who are close to factory towns may get little better price for their butter. eggs and vegetables than'those who are at distance from any market, but they get no more, for their grain and stock. A very small percentage of farmers, howev- CT, live near factory towns and they enjoy no advantage over farmers who live in the vacinity of purely commercial towns. One kind of town is as good as another so far as the farmers are concerned.
 Everyone who has given the least attention to the matter knows that the prices of the chief agricultural products are fixed in Europe where the surplus of them goes. The pric- es for wheat, corn, bacon and beef are fixed in Liverpool, and the prices which the farmers have to pay for their supplies are fixed in this country. The manufactures of agri- cultural implements, of all kinds Of wooden goods and of dozens of other things which are needed by farmers, are able because of the tariff, to charge not only a reasonable profit on the cost of the goods but also a larger additional profit. The result is that while the country is becoming noted for its millionairs who have se- cured their wealth from manufactur- ing monopolies of one kind and another the farmers are steadily growing poorer.
 New York is the greatest manu- featuring State in the Union. If factories double the price of farms and make farmers rich, the farmers of that State onght to be prosperous. But are they? In an article in the March Forum EX Congressman Mor- rison says: As to the agricultur- al interest in New York, the second State in the value of agricultural products, we are informed on the authority of the state agent of the Bureau of Satisfies, that New York farmers are more in debt than they were ten years ago; that the average depreciation of farming lands is full ly one third in ten years there are probalv one-thrd of the farms in the State would not sell for more than the cost of the buildings and otheS improvements that 30 per cent. of the farms are mortgaged for two thirds of their estimated value. This State is first in the magnitude of it's manufactures are in the advantage at home and abroad for agricultural products. It is not unfair to say that agriculture is as prosperous in New York as the average of all the States. If nearly thirty years of protection leaves the farming inter- est in the condition which this re- port shows it to be, protection does not benefit agriculture.
 If MT. Depew had studied the tar if question as carefully and con scientiously as MT. Morrison has he would hardly have made the state ment he did at Chicago.
 Corn planted before the ground