The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1888-01-05
OUR REASONS

The Todd County Argus, relative to an
article recently published in the HERALD
setting forth reasons why Minnesota.
farmers are not prepared for free trade,
says:
In the first place why are wages in Eu-
rope lower than is consistent with COM
Portable existence? 1t cannot be on &C
count of the tariff because in Germany,
which has protective tariff, wages are
q as low in England under a low tariff:
Then there is some other cause for low
wages than the tariff.
The HERALD does not assume that
wages abroad are low on account of
the tariff policies of either England or
Germany; but that the fact exists that
they are low-on account of the supply
exceeding the demand there-and if this
cheap labor were brought into active
competition with American labor under
free-trade, wages here would becompelled
to submit to a like reduction or go un-
employed. The conditions are not iden-
teal on both sides of the Atlantic now
but would become so if home labor We're
not protected from the competition of
surplus foreign labor. Again:
If the swarming of eastern fact
ory operatives to the west each with
his pockets full of money will have such
a depressing effect on our farmers would
not the swarming of people from Europe,
as we see now going on, have the same
effect?
AS a matter of act is it not hav-
ing that effect? 1t is greatly mitigated
from the fact that comparatively few of
them have sufficient capital to enter into
active competition with the farmer, but
over-production of wheat is the present
course of its improbable cultivation.
Ifso many of our farmers are cultivating
mortgagsd lands with encountered ma
chinery, why is it? We have had pro-
lection for twenty years and if it helps
the farmers who are so deeply In debt
must be poor sticks not to prosper when
protection keeps wages up so high
Debts theineyitable concomitent ofnew
and.developingc communities Minnesotais
new. Her farmers are rapidly working
themselves out of debt. Twenty years is
a very brief period in which to work out
great social problems. Eastern farmers
are money loaners to the new west, and
in time Minnesota farmers will have
money to loan, and then the question of
free-tfade will have few terrors for them.
Is it not fact that the purchasing
power of money has increased largely
within the last ten years under protec-
ton and is not this increased value due
to causes remote and beyond tariff laws,
being the same in alcountries, free-trade,
or protection?
The uniform increase in the purchas-
ing power of money is indirectly due to
other cause.-the principal one being the
reduction of the amount of manual la
Dor employed in manufacturing, which
improved machinery has occasioned. But
that affects the world at large, and no
relative advantage accrues to any one
class or nation. But the shrinkage of
values in this country, while maintained
a. present condition elsewhere, would
pace us at a acknowledgements us
relatively poorer.
Lastly we would ask the HERALD to
explain how the American people could
buy large cargoes of European goods
without exchanging products of our own
for them We cannot buy unless we have
something to sell, and in producing some
thing to sell wewill always produce that
which is wanted by foreigners and will
bring good price.
Manufactures would be purchased from
abroad with mineral and agricultural
products, sent abroad for consumption
and manufacture. The present unsatis-
factory condition of agriculture would be
intensified; and in addition our raw ma
teril would go abroad for manufacture,
aud return to us with such values added
as foreign labor and two transatlantic
trips would require. Is it not far better
to keep this raw material at home, con-
vert it into merchandise here and ship
tie increased values to foreign markets ?
1t Is under a protective tariff only that
this hea1thfll condition can exist. There
i; wide difference between prohibitory
and protective tariff. The former fos-
tiers monopoly, the latter stimulates
labor.