The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1888-01-21
the farmer are cotton. wheat

products OF the FARMER are cottOn, Wnedt
corn, beef and pork. OF these he produces
more than this country consumes and Is
therefore obliged largely 10 export, from
which 1t follows that the price of his pro
ducts Is wholly regulated by the foreign
market. For example, II wheat Is 81 30 in
Liverpool it cannot possibly go above $llO
In New York, for 1t cost 20 cents bushel
TO handle and carry it across the ocean, If
the New York dealer pays more, his sur
plus must either be exported at loss or
rot on his hands The same is true of
cotton, corn pork, DC, Therefore, no mat
ter how great the tax paid by the farmer
TO "prOtect" the home manufacturer, the
latter pays no more for what he buys from
the farmer, for the price of his (the far
mer's) products are regulated, not by the
home, but by the foreign, market.
Yet the American farmer pays just as
high for the laborer he employs as the
manufacturer pays. Indeed, as between
the wages he pays ana those PAID by the
foreign farmer, the difference is greater
than that between the wages paid by the
hon and the foreign manufacturer. Yet
the American farmer maintains success
full competition with the "pauper labor of
Europe" He takes his products abroad
and sells them at profit in the home
market of his foreign rival. "Yet," as
Henry Watterson very forcebly says In his
article In the January Harper's, "he cannot
purchase In that market what he wants
without paying a bounty In the form of
protection duties, collected the moment he
touches his native shore, for the benefit of
the American manufacturer :. :.
He is told that he gets home market
for what he has to sell, and cheaper
market for what he has to buy. If
he did, that would end the argument.
But he does not because If he had
not exhausted the home market he
would have nothing TO send abroad to
sell, and II the home manufacturer could
and did undersell the foreign market,
from which the farmer Is excluded by
protection duties, what need would the
home manufacturer have for those duties? ?"
Yet the American farmer Is generous
and patriotic, and don't kick against q
moderate annual assessment to help out
weak industries that really need assistance
to enable them to live. But Is that any
reason why he should pay enormous an.
nual burdens to thicken the lining of an
already monstrously overgrown fat bear
ribs9 Is it honest or manly to ask him to
continue to pay $2O,OOO,OO0 year to fatten
our great lumber kings, who are at such a
fearful rate destroying cur forests, thereby
bringing ruinous climatic changes, with
billiards and droughts and desolation un-
told to the great agricultural interests? Or
Is 1t honest and fair to ask him to pay $50,
000, 600 year to fatten dozen or two OF
overgrown bears that constitute the great
Syracuse salt trust? Or to pay many mil
lions year more for his barDed wire
fencing, his nails, screws, plows, barrows
&c, to fatten the great Pennsylvania iron
lords?
The Democratic party-whose fight Is
for the interests of the farmers, as 1t Is for
all honest toll against monopolistic greed
ask for no interference with the tariff that
will In the remotest degree injure any
honest industry, but they do
insist that certain gross abuses and wrongs
of the tariff shall be righted, and In this
fight they are bound to win, land don't you
forget It."