The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-03-05
THE FARM MORTGAGE is KING.

G Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, de-
clared during the debate on the tariff
that a mortgage IN the farm was an
evidence of progress and OF pros
perity. The Senator evidently belongs
to the class of men who believe a
national debt is a national blessing.
The debt may be a blessing to the
bondholder, but it is no blessing to
the taxpayer.
So in regard to the farm mortgage.
It's existence may be an evidence of
the prosperity of the money lender,
the banker, the manufacturer with a
surplus to invest; but to the farmer,
the man who owes the debt, it is a
sign, four times out of five, that he is
falling behind, and that his farm is no
longer self-sustaining.
The opinion of men vary in accord
ance with their point of view. What
to a Senator of the United States
seems a very excellent thing seems to
the men in the field a most oppressive
and d~iscouraging thing indeed. The
mortgage on the farm may e to
the Senator a vindication of the theory
of taxation, for the crop of mort
cages is chiefly due to the tariff, and
is n of the infant industries it has
developed to gigantic proportions; but
as we read over our correspondence
and our exchanges we fail to see that
farmers appreciate the beauty and the
benefit of the farm mortgage.
Writing to the Nation, of farming
in New England, Mr.. Thomas Went
worth Higginson says:
every little money passes directly
through a New England farmers
hands, and on that little the mortgage
has the first claim; and the needs of
a sick wife, or a child demanding edu-
cation, have to be made secondary.
If his house or barn are burned, the
existence of the mortgage may make
rebuilding impossible, and this was
named to me in explanation of several
abandoned farms. / was sometimes
urged to take farm property off the
farmers hands for the bare amount of
the mortgage, being once offered
about fifty acres of mortgaged wood
land, within a mile of the village post
Office and railway station, for $1,000.
This offer being declined, the owner
afterward sold off the timber for
$500, thus paying off half the mort
gage; and he must, to all appearance,
pay interest and taxes for thirty years
until the lot is sufficiently grown up
in timber to be cleared again. Mean
time he loses his frewood, which was
the only advantage he derived from
that part of his farm; and he also
loses the beauty of the pine wood,
which was the chief thing that made
his farm attractive to summer board
ers. 1t seems to me that there can be
no better illustration of the strange
logical results of the high p~rotectige
system than that it should lead a Mas
sachusetts Senator seriously to assert
that a mortgage on a New England
farm is a sign of health"
No one is better fitted to speak con
corning the condition Of the people of
New England than MI. Higginson.
1t seem that "~protection" does not
give even the New England farmers a
home market, though all the rest of
the country is taxed to protect the
New England manufacturers.
Perhaps it is better in Pennsylvania,
the home of Judge Kelley and Mr..
Randall two staunch advocates of
protection. Well, the mortgage is as
actively at work in Pennsylvania as it
is elsewhere. The following notice is
clipped from the Reading pa Times:
"The sheriff of Berks county has
real estate sales advertised for
the 9th and 18th of February, among
which are a good many farms. There
has not been SO much activity in the
sherif's Office since the panic of 1873.
The unusual number of farms sold
has attracted considerable attention
and excited much comment"
Burks is one of the best agricultu-
counties in the Keystone State.
further testimony on this point,
quote the following from the Phil
adelphia Times:
"The farming industry, the greatest
all our industries, is now perishing
but surely from the continue
lion of the war taxes maintained
a quarter of a century after
peace, and when the public treasury
has been overlooking with surplus
millions for years. It is taxation,
Ind taxation only, that is depreciating
he value of our farms and ~lessening
he reward of agricultural labor from
year to year. The farmer is taxed,
leedlessly taxed, for almost everything
and his family consume. If he
scans his dress, from hat to boots and
rom underclothing to overcoat, he is
axed for everything he wears, and
lis wife and dannhtars GRO lirrnn