The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-07-27
WHAT PROTECTION HAS CREA-
TED.
IInter-Ocean.1

llnter-Ocean.l
Despite of the clamor of the Demo-
cratic press for one more Democratic
Senator, the proposition upon which
money can be bet with q certainty of
winning, if takers can be found, is that
the next Congress will contain greater
number of protectionists than the pres
ent one. Even the solid South is sure to
abandon its old time solidity of devotion
to free trade; the phalanx of Senators
and Representatives from the Southern
tier may continue solid for States rights,
suppression of the negro vote, opposi-
ton to free schools, and for all the other
ancient prejudices and traditions of De-
mocracy, but on tariff questions 1t will
vote in groups. Parts of the Southern
tier are learning what diversified indus
tries do for farmers. They are learning
how the prices of butter and eggs and
meat and cheese 60 up, and the prices
of clothing and cotton goods and "no-
tons" come down when there is little
peting for the purchase of their produce
and for their patronage as purchasers of
manufactures, in place of the old time
crossroads store; with its sign of trade
for produce"
In the North, and especially in the
Northwest, there is no possibility of a
return to low tariff ideas. Most of the
farmers and the merchants and the arti-
sans understand that "the American
desert" would still be written on the
maps where the names of Kansas and
Nebraska now stand if protective poll
cy had not crowded population West
ward in search of lands, from the prod
ucts of which the great manufacturing
and trading cities and regions are to be
fed. Most people in the Northwest
comprehend the great and profitable
difference between home market which
consumes nine-tenths of all the farm
products of the country and foreign
market which would take nine-tenths of
it in exchange for goods Of its own man.
ufacture, the price and quality Of which
it would fix at its own pleasure.
Our exports of domestic manufacture
and products have increased fourfold
under the protective system, an increase
which represents, in round numbers,
$4OO, 600 GOO per year paid to us by for
eign nations in excess of the sum paid in
1850, while on the other hand we have
built up system of manufactures which
now supplies us with a great part, and
promises speedily to supply us with the
whole, of the wooden, cotton, iron, steel,
silk, and other fabrics which we use, and
at ever cheapening prices. The iron
trade of this country, the greatest en-
joyed by any country of the world, is the
creation of the tariff system. How inn
proved the condition of the farming
classes is hardly needs rehearslng. Who
soever remembers 1860 knows that many
even well-to-do farmers wore home-spun
and lived in log houses, went to the next
town on horseback or in a iolting wagon
to "trade" cheap eggs and butter and
grain and meat for dear coffee, sugar,
and calico, drove their hogs or hauled
their wheat long distances and sold them
at low prices, lived life OF lncessant
toll and had few pleasures. TODAY ev-
cry farmer who is at all well to do has
his buggy, his wife has her sewing ma
chine, bis daughters their piano or or
gan. The log house is becoming Curl
osity, the homemade jeans are supplant-
ed by "store goods" and not seldom
''tailor-made" clothes. There is no
farmer who would change the condition
Of 1888 for those of 1850. 1t Ia not in the
farming districts of the Northwest that
the Democratic press is likely to find
response to its demands for
another Democratic Senator to aid in the |
of the Mills bill, which removes
protection from most farm products and |
threatens farmers with q serious abridge- |
ment of that home market which pro-
lection has created for them.