The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1889-12-27
Friday. Dec. ~, 1889.
Protection Laws and Farm ers.


because they have to depend on foreign
markets to sell their surplus products in.
Our manufacturers are itch because they sell
their products at home. They are enabled
to sell their products at home, by our tariff
laws excluding foreign manufactured goods
unless their importers pay to the govern
ment an average all round Of Al per cent OF
their cost as license to permit them to be
sold in our markets. Our manufacturers
send surplus of their goods to foreign
markets, where their peculiar make, pattern
or style creates demand for such goods, or
when some advantage in climate, machinery
or raw material enables them to produce a
cheap article; or special order is received
for some machinery or other goods which
from some cause they possess the inside adj
vantage on. No such incidental helps aid
the farmer. All he has to sell are the raw
products from the hand of nature, varying
but little if any from like products on any
portion of the earth's surface. And when
lie raises and produces more corn, wheat,
cotton, hogs and cattle than are required to
feed our own people the surplus must 60
abroad to find market and compete with
the agricultural products of the whole world.
Wool is raw agricultural product that
may reap an advantage from tariff laws,
and the large flock masters earnestly urge
their claim to government protection. They
claim that there are million "6ock mas
tiers" in the United States. This claim is
approximately true technically, but practi-
cally it is utterly false. One or two thous-
and persons it is probable would include all
who could justly claim to be "fock mas
iers," and they are principally on the plains
of New Mexico, Texas, Western Kansas,
Colorado, California, and the Territories
northwest. They employ but few hands.
One man with pony and two colly dogs
will take care Of 1000 sheep all summer.
These large flock masters of the prairies
raise no grain They are not farmers in
any true serse, but distinct industrial class,
as much SO as the great cattle-ranch mil
lionairs who employ few wild ''cow boys"
to attend their cattle, and whose competition
ruin the beef business Of true farmers.
In some parts of Ohio, and other states,
there are hocks numbering so to few hun,
dred head. These sheep men are largely
breeders Of improved stock. Deduct these
no Il 81,
The United States, and we will find the bal
ance of the million are farmers who have a
dozen 10 twenty sheep as small adjunct to
their business, like their flock of fowls or
herd of swine! When country becomes
thckly settled aud villages spring up the
dog nuisance destroys the sheep. A thous-
and per cent tariff on wool wouldn't add
one more sheep to ihe focks of Cecil county.
Ifthere we've no sheep destroying dogs in
the country every farm would have flock
of sheep as surely as a flock of chickens,
without regard to the tariff, and in place of
there being only 250 million pounds Of wool
produced in the country, there would be two
thousand million pounds. Then what
would happen? The surplus would be 10
export and find a market in competition
with the whole worlds clip, and tariff on
wool would become imperative, as it is on
wheat or beef.
We see therefore that the tariff on wool,
however high, cannot benefit the fonr and a
half million farmers in this country, to any
preceptible extent, while il is great injury
TO WOODEN manufacturers, compelling them
10 pay high rate for the wool they import,
and thus shutting their goods out from
foreign market. Nothing benefits the
English manufacturer so much as a tariff on
raw material imposed by our government.
without it would be free trade in manufac-
tured goods.
If our manufacturers ere ever to compete
in foreign markets for the sale of their
goods, they must be permitted to purchase
their raw material in the worlds markets as
cheap as any of their foreign competitors can
purchases then with a tariff on manufactured
articles to curb the inflow Of foreign goods,
they can supply our home markets with
cheap goods and send their surplus abroad,
with fair chance for competition with
foreign manufacturers. This would create
work for the idle million, increase other
branches of non-food-producing industries
and make home market for our food pro-
ducts which go abroad to help foreign man
ufacturers by cheapening the food supply of
those countries.
With high duty on wool we import half
our WOODEN goods, because our wooden man
ufacturers are unable to pay high duty on
raw wool and make woolens cheap, conse-
quently in spite of duty of 6s per cent on
woolens, the foreigner can send his goods in
here and sell them at price which enables
him to pay the 6S per cent to the govern
ment, and get it back off of the Al millions
of farmers, and all for the benefit of a
thousand or two large flock masters who
have ranches on the wild plains. The
English are furnishing half our wooden
goods. A tariff on wool does not help the
great mass of farmers. for if they could all
60 to raising wool they would bring the
price down by having 10 send the surplus to
a foreign market as we have to send our
surplus wheat, pork and beef. The present
tariff does not help farmers, and the proof
is that farm products are lower than they
have heen for 40 years, and we have, and
have had for two decades, the highest tariff
ever laid. And more than this the farmers