Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-11-01
HOW FARMERS ARE TO BE BENE
FITTED BY VOTING FOR
MAHONE


When the Hon. Julius Caesar Burrows
lectured some of the farmers of Augusta
county from the platform of the Skating
Rink in Staunton, on the benefits of High
Protective Tariff three weeks ago, and
urged them to vote for candidate Malone
on that account, he had evidently not read
the official circular of the commissioner
of Agriculture and Manufacturing Inter
ests' of Vermont, issued just one month
before. We have a copy of it before us da-
ted at Bennington, VT. September 10Th,
1889. If there is any publication that has
been made in this country, which by it's
facts so utterly demolishes and pulverizes
the favorite home-marke1 theory Of the
High Federal Taxation people, as this does,
we have not seen it. Vermont, as our read
ers know, is an agricultural and manufac-
turing State. Its little manufacturing
villages are hives for more skilled labor
than some of the large cities of the coun-
Try. 1t is part of that great manufac-
tnring corner of America called New
England, and you can almost shoot rifle
ball from one s'home market" to another.
But the agricultural interest has been ruin
ing SO fast and the farms are being aban-
poned so rapidly that at last an ''official"
effort is being made by the State authori-
ties to repopulate the land with farmers.
The Commissioner circular which we are
using is one of the efforts in that direction.
He hopes by letting the world know of the
''cheap" and abandoned lands of Vermont.
to secure immigration; forgetting that the
cause OF that cheapness and abandonment
will operate as sorely on the new purchaser
as it did on the old owner. The truth OF
the matters that the highly protected man
ufacturers are enabled by the tariff to
make the home farmer pay their own prices
and that all the money realized by agricul-
ture is absorbed in the manufacturing vii
lagos. While the Eastern farmer is fight
ing for his life to compete with the Yves
tern grain the manufacturers are buying
where they can get bread cheapest, and that
is In the west. Of course none OF this
reasoning appears in the circular of Com
missioner A. B. Valentine of Vermont, for
he, like the Hon. Julius Caesar Burrows
and candidate Malone, is with the manu-
facturers and in favor of the Senate bill
which next December will come up for
adoption and which makes get higher
tariff tGG to be borne by those who labor in
the fields.
Let us look at two OF three of the pic
lures which aretobe found in this Circular.
A report from the t0wn-in New England
township is called a town-of Reading
Windsor county, says: 81 can safely say
that 1000 acres can be purchased in this
town alone, adjoining, and of this amount
about one half are in farms of from 20 to
200 acres, and several with building, many
of them occupied, which could be bought
Tor from IS to 81 per acre. The remaining
one-half relands which formerly comprised
good farms, but with buildings now gone.
and fast growing up to timber. Some of
this land is used for pasturage, and Oh
other portions the fences are not kept I'D.
leaving old cellar holes and miles of stone
walls to testify to former civilization.
Such lands can be purchased from 81 to 81
pO1 dCIc. w 1dU uOtS dill AuSttS county
farmer think of this official picture of
farming on land actually surrounding and
enclosing the boosted 'home-markets7 of
MI. Burrows and Candidate Malone But
that, though bad enough, is by no means
the worst. In Orange county the report
says: "Some farms can be bought at from
81 to SIS per acre." and tone farm of 200
acres can be bought for one hundred |
dollars with fair buildings, and good soil
and grass lodged" In the same county
in the townships of Strafford and Chelsea
''there are from thirty-fve to forty farms,
contiguous, Oh nearly so, abandoned and
unOccupied." In Vershire township. in
the same county, ''We have many other
abandoned farms with good buildings on
them that could be bought for So OF less
per acre The Commissioner on visiting
Wyndham county found that ''farms ae-
gregating over 5000 acres were available
for occupancy by those desiring them,
some of them being centrally located with
habitable buildings" The Commissioner
in closing his Circular hopes that this infor-