The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1888-09-28
The Fa, mer In Politics.

1t is curious, a western agricultur.
al paper remarks, that the country is
full of agricultural papers and yet
there is seldom found in any of them
line in defense of the farmers in
terest. They appear to think that
IT they instruct him how to raise DO
tatoes, corn and hogs that they are
doing their full duty towards him.
Of what advantage to the farmer is
it to raise large crops which serve the
sharpers as stakes to gamble with, to
bet on margins from month to month,
and buy and sell In this manner ten
times more grain and other produce
than is in the whole country thus
running the market and causing fic.
titious prices? Farmers elect large
majority of our Congressman and
State legislators. and yet can scarcely
get bill through these law makig
bodies favoring their interests. Last
winter the farmers of this state were
sanguine that some remedy would be
applied by our legislature to relieve
them of their heavy tax burthens and
equalize the taxes more nearly by a
just distribution oyer the property of
the State, but not thing was done.
Two most valuable and instructive
reports were made by commission
appointed by previous legislature
with'a bill embracing the MANY val
liable points of information on taxa.
ton, but there was, apparently not
the least effort made to get bill be-
fore the Legislature, and nothing at
all was done to relieve the unjust
burthens of taxation which the farm.
ers of Maryland labor under.
No doubt the money interest saw
to it that no tax bill should be in
troduced into the legislature, pre-.
Stunning that the farmers, as hereto
fore, would quietly go to work in
their field when spring opened and
forget all about the fuss they had
made the fall before over the election.
The money class we've right in their
estimate, for the farmers didn't utter
a single complaint that we heard.
Every county in the state has from
two to half q dozen papers which are
supported by the farmers, very large.
ly, but seldom one of these papers
ever says word in his interest, but
busy themselves rafting round in the
interest of professional politicians.
Just now they are all apparently half
crazed lest our manufacturers shall
be driven out of house and home by
free trade or some other hugaboo and
the laboring mems wages-no Others
are laboring men except those who
work in some kind of manufacturing
establishment-will be cut down to
starvation rates on level with the
"paupe: wages of Europe"
They all stop right here. The
farmers are standing round all this
time, with their fingers in their
mouths, as it were. Does it ever &C.
cur to these stormy petrats who
scream ruin and tell in trumpet tones
how the country is surely going to
the dimnation bowyows, if their
man is not elected, that our farm
produce is lower than farm produce
in pauper ridden England or the con.
tinent? The farmers products can't
be protected very well by tariff laws
against the "pauper labor" of Europe
but he could be protected from the
sxtortion of the sscoundrels in Rhis
own country, from unjust and un :
equal taxation, from combines that
olunder him in the produce market,
rom trusts that extort from him in
very necessary he buys, from rail-
Dad monopolies which regulate and
yet tic price of his coal and appoint
he agent who shall supply him with